With the occurrence of every major earthquake, there has been in the past, almost a world-wide tendency to increase the capacity demand of the structure to counteract such events. It is only in the last decade that new strategies have been successfully developed to handle this problem economically. The current international practice has shifted towards a performance-based engineering design, wherein the accent is on serviceability and safety under different levels of magnitude of earthquakes. Also there is an increasing realization that apart from techniques for improving ductility, the structural engineer’s tool-box should include energy-dissipating and energy-sharing devices and those that can control the response of the system. There have also been further advances on appropriate methods and devices of preventing ‘dislodgement’ or ‘unseating’ of the superstructure in the event of severe ground shaking. How these ideas can be used in economical earthquake resistant design of bridges is the subject of this paper.