How far is Madison (Wisconsin) from Chicago? Here's the quick answer if you drive this relatively short distance without making any stops.
Nonstop drive: 148 miles or 238 km
Driving time: 2 hours, 26 minutes
Even though you can drive this distance straight through, it might be more interesting to stop along the way. You can scroll down to calculate how many hours it would take if you drive with stops.
Now let's assume you have a private jet and you can fly in the fastest possible straight line between Chicago, Illinois and Madison, Wisconsin. Because of the curvature of the Earth, the shortest distance is actually the "great circle" distance, or "as the crow flies" which is calculated using an iterative Vincenty formula.
Flight distance: 122 miles or 197 km
Flight time: 30 minutes
The straight line flight distance is 26 miles less than driving on roads, which means the driving distance is roughly 1.2x of the flight distance.
Your plane flies much faster than a car, so the flight time is about 1/3th of the time it would take to drive.
This is a relatively short flight in a private plane, but you might be planning to book a commercial flight. In that case, your travel time would really need to include how many minutes to get to your local airport, wait for security, board and taxi on the runway, land at the other airport, and get to your destination. Scroll down to see a more realistic calculation that takes into account all these factors to get a more accurate estimate of your actual flight time.
Let's say you're actually planning a road trip to Madison (Wisconsin), and you want to stop on the way to explore. If it's a real road trip, you might want to check out interesting places along the way, or maybe eat at a great restaurant. That's what Trippy is perfect for, helping you figure out travel plans in detail.
Road trip: 1 day of driving
With the full itinerary planned out, we can estimate your total travel time for this trip.
Travel time: 3.5 hours on the road
Itinerary
Start in Chicago.
Drive for about 36 minutes, then stop in Arlington Heights (Illinois) and stay for about 1 hour.
Next, drive for another 1 hour then stop at Cherryvale Mall and stay for 1 hour.
Drive for 1 hour then stop at Lake Kegonsa State Park and stay for 1 hour.
Finally, drive for about 21 minutes and arrive in Madison (Wisconsin).
To see all the details on this itinerary, including recommended restaurants, hotels, and things to do along the way, check out the full road trip planner:
In the quick calculation above, we assumed you had a private plane and just wanted to know the time in the air from city to city. But for most of us, we're going to be flying on a commercial airline (whether it's first class or coach). So that means we really need to account for all the extra travel time getting to the airport, waiting for our flight, and making it to the destination.
To give you a better estimate of real-life travel, we've put together a flight itinerary with actual airports. Eventually you'll be able to customize this plan, choosing your own airports and flights. But for now, here's an example we've selected to give you an idea of how traveling might work between airports.
Departure airport: Chicago O'Hare International Airport (ORD)
Arrival airport: Dane County Regional Airport (MSN)
With the airports selected, we can estimate the travel time to and from the airport, based on how far the airport is from downtown.
Getting to the airport: 48 minutes
Getting to your destination: 17 minutes
Now finally, let's look at an actual flight from ORD to MSN on American Airlines and figure out how long it would take to fly including take-off and landing, and time to taxi on the runway.
Commercial flight time: 53 minutes
So now we can finally get an idea of the total travel time from Chicago to Madison (Wisconsin) including time spent getting to/from the airports, an estimated wait time of 2 hours at the airport for TSA security lines and waiting at the gate, and the actual flight itself.
Total travel time: 4 hours
To see the details on this flight plan, including recommended airports, airline, and route, check out the flight planner:
Trippy has a ton of information that can help you plan your trip to Madison, Wisconsin. Start by reading the Trippy page on where to stay in Madison (Wisconsin). A great place to eat might be The Old Fashioned. Trippy members can suggest things to do in Madison (Wisconsin) like Wisconsin State Capitol. Check out some of the questions people have asked about Madison (Wisconsin) like What is your favorite restaurant in Madison?. Click the button below to explore Madison (Wisconsin) in detail.
The distance is the same either way if you're flying a straight line (or driving the same roads back and forth). But for a real trip, there can be plenty of differences so go ahead and check the reverse directions to get the distance from Madison (Wisconsin) to Chicago, or go to the main page to calculate the distance between cities.
If you happen to know Chicago, don't forget to help other travelers and answer some questions about Chicago!