The station is located at 2121 West Northwest Highway (US 14) and Wilke Road, within Arlington Park Race Course, and lies 24.4 miles (39.3 km) from Ogilvie Transportation Center in Chicago.

[2] In Metra's zone-based fare system, Arlington Park is in zone 3.

As of 2018[update], Arlington Park is the 15th busiest of the 236 non-downtown stations in the Metra system, with an average of 1,738 weekday boardings.

[1] The Arlington Park station was designed originally to serve just the Arlington Park Race Track, but now serves postal employees at the Processing and Distribution Center in Palatine, Illinois as well as residents of southeast Palatine and west Arlington Heights, although a fence blocks most of the access to the station from the Palatine side.

Impark has sometimes drawn criticism over business practices related to parking payment; at this lot in particular, commuters are required to pay a surcharge to use pay-by-phone when the lot's payment machines are out of order.