In order to investigate the seismic performance of reinforced concrete (RC) rectangular hollow bridge columns constrained with fiber reinforced polymer (FRP), cyclic tests of six RC specimens with aspect ratio 4 under constant axial loads (axial compression ratio is 0.2) and uniaxial bending were carried out in this paper. The failure characteristic, flexural ductility, dissipated energy and lateral ultimate load capacity were analyzed. The experimental results indicate that the ductility and dissipated energy of the RC rectangular hollow bridge piers constrained with FRP improved significantly. The displacement ductility coefficient and the total energy dissipation may increase about 65.4% and 25.8%, respectively. The constrained behavior of FRP has little influence on the ultimate lateral force capacity of RC rectangular hollow bridge columns (it has an increase about 3.0% at most). Based on the experimental results and Clough model, a simplified hysteretic model considering the strength and stiffness degradation effects for bridge piers constrained with FRP was established and its unload stiffness and reload stiffness regression formulae were given.