CHI - IND Bus service

I'm planning a trip to Milwaukee. I'm going to take the Hoosier State then Hiawatha to Milwaukee. Coming back I'm considering the bus connection back to Indy because it gets me home 3 hours sooner. What are the experiences of people who've taken the Greyhound connections? Is the time savings worth riding a bus on a smaller seat?

Whether it's "worth it", or not, is really your personal decision.....

Have you ever ridden either the train or bus before? If time is your motivation for travel...you can certainly do better than each of those choices by flying or even, driving. If the pleasure of riding the train is your motivation, than why not ride by train the entire way?

It looks like most of the bus schedules have a stop at the Chicago Greyhound station as well. I don't know if you have to get off there, but if so it's not a pleasant station or bus area when I've passed through it. The bathrooms are especially atrocious; I'd much rather go to the bathroom on the bus itself than use a bathroom at that Greyhound station. Other than that it's serviceable, but barely. I haven't went through there in a year or two, so maybe it's gotten better.

I'd take the train, though. Looking at the options you're going to have to leave Milwaukee two hours earlier, so the net time difference is an hour. I'd rather take the train than the bus with that time savings, especially since it's a Greyhound bus and there's a pretty good chance I'd have to go through the Chicago Greyhound station.

EDIT TO ADD: This assumes that going home from the Indianapolis train station is relatively quick or easy either way. If you've got a two hour drive home or the transit service you're relying on shuts down before the train arrives, then I'd take the bus and deal with it. But if it's fairly easy to still get home at 11:40 PM, I'd take the later arrival home over taking the bus and losing two hours at the place I'm visiting.

railiner said:

Whether it's "worth it", or not, is really your personal decision.....

Have you ever ridden either the train or bus before? If time is your motivation for travel...you can certainly do better than each of those choices by flying or even, driving. If the pleasure of riding the train is your motivation, than why not ride by train the entire way?

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Ordinarily there'd be no contest. I'm a rail fan. My mom had a few relatives work for the New York Central in Elkhart. If Amtrak didn't roll into Indianapolis at midnight I totally would ride the train back home all the way. The only reason I'm considering riding the Hiawatha back to CHI then transfer to Greyhound back to Indy is it gets me home almost 3 hours sooner. This makes waking up to go back to work monday morning easier.

A lot of my friends seem to take (or have taken) Megabus to Indy and Louisville as well - though I don't think they board as close to Union Station anymore, hence Greyhound may be a bit closer.