Reliability of greyhound/amtrak from Minneapolis to Chicago

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To find data about Amtrak's on-time performance, there is the indispensable Amtrak Status Maps Archive Database (ASMAD). This site gathers data from Amtrak's website and presents it in an easy-to-sort format.

For the Empire Builder (train #8), this site shows that the train arrived late by 45 minutes or more on six days out of the last thirty. So there's an approximately 80% chance that the train would get you to your event on time.

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Unfortunately, there are few resources for tracking on-time performance of Greyhound buses. To get a sense of performance on the route, you can use the Greyhound BusTracker website supplied by Greyhound itself. This is a "current status" tool, like an airline flight tracker, and you cannot find historical information with it; but if you check it on a daily basis, you can get a sense of when and where delays can occur. The route from Minneapolis to Chicago is long enough that even if you accumulate delays on one or two legs, the bus can make it up on others, although naturally there are limits to this.

For train performance, similarly, Amtrak provides only a train status lookup with no historical information (irritatingly, there is no way to link to it directly from the desktop site; the mobile site link is given). There are hobbyists who collect and compile such information, however. Probably the largest such resource is the Amtrak Status Maps Archive Database (ASMAD) which lets you search by train number or station; not all stations have complete information for both departures and arrivals, however. The sole daily MSP-CHI train has quite a range; most arrive before a half hour after scheduled arrival, but on a few days over the last month, delays of two to three hours are reported.

Another potential tool is Amtrak Status Maps, which also records historical performance, and shows performance based on train rather than on station (e.g. Train 8).

For driving, Google Maps and Waze (also owned by Google) will give you estimates that incorporate historical information about traffic congestion.

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