David Billington's Influence on U.S. Bridge Design

This paper describes David Billington's efforts to improve American bridge design by bringing his insight concerning structural art to a range of bridge building agencies and their coordinating institutions, beginning with the Departments of Transportation of Maryland and Minnesota. It also presents his role in bringing to two Maryland bridges the Swiss practice of developing bridge designs via design competitions as a means of resolving contentious public controversies. Finally, it presents two particularly important American bridges that benefitted from his ideas.