I’m sorry my stupid joke has lead to a hijack. Please return to your regularly scheduled programming.
Though called Aquidneck Island it is actually named ‘Rhode Island’. Hence the basis of the original name of the state. We recently changed the name of the state from ‘Rhode Island and Providence Plantations’ to just ‘Rhode Island’. So the largest island in the state of Rhode Island is Rhode Island, but that island is not the entire state.
IIRC there is a tunnel between Labrador and Newfoundland at the nearest approach point (about 10mi) but it’s only for power cables. There have been proposals to make a rail tunnel/chunnel at the same point but the traffic and distance doesn’t necessarily warrant it.
There are no bridges or tunnels to Bananal Island in the Araguaia River in Brazil, but at 19,162 sq km, it may be the largest island you can reach by fording a river in a normal road vehicle. The river can only be forded for a few weeks every year in the dry season.
There’s also: Palk Strait Bridge - Wikipedia
During the July 2023 a two day visit of Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickramasinghe to India, both nations agreed to conduct a feasibility study for a proposed bridge connecting India and Sri Lanka
65,601km^2 would probably be a winner.
Also, with the Suez canal now built, would Africa be an island off the coast of the Sinai?
And another pie-in-the-sky is this:
The idea of building a fixed link between Sakhalin and the Russian mainland was first put forward in the 1930s. In the 1940s, an abortive attempt was made to link the island via a 10-kilometre-long (6 mi) undersea tunnel.[62] The project was abandoned under Premier Nikita Khrushchev. In 2000, the Russian government revived the idea, adding a suggestion that a 40-km (25 mile) long bridge could be constructed between Sakhalin and the Japanese island of Hokkaidō, providing Japan with a direct connection to the Eurasian railway network.
And also this:
The Central Spine Road 2 or Malacca Strait Bridge (Indonesian: Jembatan Selat Malaka , Malaysian: Jambatan Selat Melaka or JSM and Jembatan Selmal ) is a proposed bridge that would connect Telok Gong, near Masjid Tanah, Malacca in Peninsular Malaysia to Rupat Island and Dumai in Sumatra island, Indonesia.[1] The project has been submitted for government approval, and is expected to take 10 years to complete. Once completed, the 48-kilometre-long (30 mi) bridge will be the longest sea-crossing bridge in the world. The project will have two cable-stayed bridges and one suspension bridge, both the longest in the world.
As a lifelong Rho Dislander, let me assure you we do NOT trust any data furnished by the government. Also, because of our fractal coastline, none of our miles are square.
And it’s not called a plantation any more because it’s all been paved over?
I don’t think the Labrador Sea ever freezes over. There’s sea ice, certainly, but that forms more along the coasts of Greenland and Labrador. It’s about 1000 km wide.
I thought there’d be one somewhere in Asia, but so far no one’s supplied one.
As far as I know, Honshu is not connected to mainland Asia by bridge or tunnel.
Exactly. Although if someone ever builds a bridge in Antarctica, that would count as a mainland too.
I thought causeways were roads built on a narrow landfill. That is, water would not flow under them.
Cape Bretton and Prince Edward Is are larger. PEI is connected by bridge and, as said in the OP, Cape Bretton is connected by causeway.
Long Island is the largest island in the contiguous US. The Big Island in Hawaii and several islands in Alaska are larger. None of those are connected by bridges as far as I know.
I checked that one before writing the OP. I couldn’t find a bridge.
Maybe there should also be a non-infrastructure category for that. That would include the “fording a river”, as someone added later. Simpler, though, is to say that the driving connection has to be there all year around, which would eliminate both. I think I’ll go with that.
Getting to the island by multiple bridge island hopping is allowed. Thus there are numerous ways to get from the mainland to Long Island.
Back in the Goode Olde Days, my Rand McNally atlas from the 1950’s showed the northern and southern extent to Arctic Sea ice. I presume that information is severely outdated today. however, If you can drive to the North Pole, you just change the heading a bit on the way south again. Not that it gets you anywhere worthwhile.
But there is a railroad tunnel between Hokkaido and Honshu, which would be “mainland” for the Japanese. I suppose the Sakhalin connections would eventually qualify if they build it, but that’s a stretch. There’s also the possibility of tunnels “island-hopping” to South Korea, but that’s currently a non-starter because from there any rail connection would have to go through North Korea.
Just getting to S Korea would be all that’s required, since that’s part of the mainland. There doesn’t have to be a road/rail connection to the rest of Asia. However, note that I excluded rail tunnels and bridges in the OP. Only road connections are under discussion.
I am surprised no one has found a bigger bridge-connected island than Zealand, which was in the OP. I spent very little time researching this and expected I missed some larger island.
There was a time when someone did drive a snowmobile across the ice bridge from the US of A to the USS of R. I guess you’d have to go the other way to suit the OP because in that case the mainland is Eurasia and the island is North America.
As far as the OP is concerned, Eurasia and North America are both mainlands.
Does the Corinth canal turn a peninsula into an island? IIRC it’s all at sea level.
I assume a couple of well-places explosives could turn Crimea into a driveable island, if the bridge on the other side remians.
Yes, my point was it’s not likely to be built any time soon since nowadays there’s nowhere to go from there.
A 4-mile gap separates Tierra del Fuego from the mainland, too. Again, traffic volume probably doesn’t warrant such a construction.
Isla Grande de Chiloe is only 1 mile or so from the Chile mainland.
Manitoulin Island appears to be the biggest drive-to Island in a freshwater lake.
Generally, canals are not considered to turn parts of mainland into islands. Otherwise, eastern North America, Europe and China would be large groupings of islands rather than mainland. Even sea level ones don’t do it. Cape Cod would be considered an island if that were an exception.
I was thinking of Sri Lanka, but the natural causeway leading there broke up a few hundred years ago. (And perhaps while the causeway existed you might quibble about the term “island”).
I was curious so I looked up why there is no bridge to Vancouver Island. It seems pretty close so would seem to make sense.
But, it looks like it will never happen. While it is technically possible and could be built (many longer bridges exist) it would just be so colossally expensive that Canada will probably never try.
From that article:
So, even at a low estimate of $22 billion, this would be infrastructure spending on a whole other scale. That’s enough money to fund the Canadian Armed Forces for an entire year. Or, it could pay for 12 months of B.C. health expenditures. Or, it could cover B.C. Ferries’ $783 million operating budget for the next 28 years.
The original route considered for the Canadian Pacific Railway was for it to end at Prince Rupert, then island hop with bridges to the north end of Vancouver Island. Was abandoned.
Rhode Island is a myth. Has anyone ever actually met someone from there?
Didn’t think so!