Magazine article: "Tremor-proof bridges"

The magazine article talks about how earthquake engineers have come up with an ingenious new way to make earth quake-proof bridges. Their 'rocking' bridge design avoids damage by jumping right off the ground. The system can even be fitted to old bridges so they'll be safer in future.

The design works as following explained:

All bridges have towers that support the bridge deck. Usually these towers are securely fixed to deep foundations, especially in an earthquake zone. But engineers' new bridge design has an innovative and counter “intuitive feature “, its towers aren't anchored down.
Instead, the towers can lift a few inches off land, causing the bridge to rock to and fro.

This stops vibrations from an earthquake building up, which would otherwise rip the towers right out of the ground.
The amount of rocking is carefully controlled by grounding structures that guide the towers safely back into position. Shock-absorbent 'dampers' can also be attached to each tower base to help restrict how high the bridge lifts and how fast it travels back into the ground.

The text ends with an opinion of a co-worker of the project, Michael Bruneau: “Engineers are starting to warm up to the possibility of using rocking in their designs. We hope that this concept will be increasingly used to help design new bridges in the future, but it's early days yet. This is truly a trend of the future”.