Oakland, CA to Benicia, CA: distance, drive time and fuel cost
It is about 22 miles from Oakland, CA to Benicia, CA, which is roughly 35 min behind the wheel. Everything below is an estimate — see how it is worked out at the bottom of the page.
Estimated road distance
22miles
35 km
- Drive time
- 35 min
- Average speed
- 38 mph
- Fuel cost
- $3
- Fuel used
- 0.9 gal
Cities along the way
Places within about 25 miles of the route from Oakland, CA to Benicia, CA, in the order you would reach them.
What the drive from Oakland to Benicia is like
Both ends of this route sit in California, so it is an intra-state drive with no state line to cross and one set of road rules the whole way. At roughly 35 min this is a local run rather than a trip. Traffic at either end will move the real figure more than the distance does, so time it around the peaks rather than around the mileage.
There are 6 towns of any size close to the line between the two cities, the first being Mill Valley, CA at about 2 miles in. That matters mostly for where you can stop: on a 35 min drive the useful question is not how far it is but where the fuel, food and daylight run out.
Driving beats flying on this one: 1 hr 57 min quicker door to door once security, boarding and the trips to and from the airports are counted. For 22 miles that is the straightforward answer.
What the fuel works out at, and what that figure assumes
22 miles at 25.4 miles per gallon is about 0.9 gallons, which comes to roughly $2.72 at $3.15 a gallon. Split between four people that is about $0.68 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 $0.43 — so read $2.72 as the middle of a range from roughly $2.29 to $3.16, 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 8 kg of CO₂ this drive implies is arithmetic on the fuel rather than a measurement: 0.9 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.