Bismarck, ND to Grand Forks, ND: distance, drive time and fuel cost

Both ends of this route sit in North Dakota, so it is an intra-state drive with no state line to cross and one set of road rules the whole way. At roughly 3 hr 42 min this is a straightforward day's drive with one proper stop in the middle. Leaving early puts you in Grand Forks with the afternoon still ahead of you.

Flying this route saves about 49 min door to door once airport time is counted, so the drive is a choice rather than the obvious option — worth it if you want the car at the other end, or if you would rather see the 222 miles than sit them out.

222 miles at 25.4 miles per gallon is about 8.8 gallons, which comes to roughly $28 at $3.15 a gallon. Split between four people that is about $6.90 each, which is the comparison worth making before you look at a flight price rather than after. Two figures in that sentence are assumptions rather than facts about your trip: the price per gallon, reviewed 2026-08, and the consumption, which is a US fleet average. Both are published with the rest of the method under fuel cost assumptions.

The size of that assumption is easy to see on this route. A fifty-cent move in the pump price either way changes the total by about $4.38 — so read $28 as the middle of a range from roughly $23 to $32, not as a quote. A car that does noticeably better or worse than 25.4 mpg shifts it further, and neither figure includes tolls, which are charged on a good deal of the interstate network in the northeast and on individual bridges and tunnels elsewhere. Nothing on this page knows which tolls apply to a particular route, so none are counted.

For the same reason the 78 kg of CO₂ this drive implies is arithmetic on the fuel rather than a measurement: 8.8 gallons of gasoline at the EPA's figure of 8.89 kg per gallon. It is useful for comparing this route against flying it, or against a longer way round, and not useful as an absolute number.