It’s been a great year for alternative transportation. High-speed rail projects took off from the ground, driver-less cars hit the roads, bikes lanes across the country went up, and of course, the first set of mainstream electric vehicles were launched. Here are our top 6 transportation stories of 2010.

1. Chevrolet Volt and Nissan LEAF make it out of the door: While electric cars like the Roadster have been around some time, the first set of mainstream EVs finally hit market towards the end of 2010. The Chevrolet Volt and Nissan LEAF both made their first deliveries earlier this month and SMART, Mitsubishi, Toyota, BMW, etc. are set to follow. Cities and utility companies are also preparing for onslaught and have begun building Smart charging systems and public charging infrastructure for the new system of cars.

2. High-speed rail projects take off: There has been several controversies following high-speed rail this past year. While the Obama administration has been a huge proponent of the system distributing around $8 billion around the country to promote high speed rail, several Republican governors have been opposed to the projects citing its enormous costs. America’s largest infrastructure project — the ARC tunnel — which was supposed to build a train line connecting New Jersey to New York City was canceled in October, while incoming governors of Wisconsin and Ohio also returned federal money given to the states to build high-speed rail there. However, $1.2 billion given to those states is now being given to California, Florida, Washington State, Illinois, New York, Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont, Missouri, Wisconsin (for the Hiawatha line), Oregon, North Carolina, Iowa and Indiana. Republicans are arguing that the investment isn’t prudent at a time when our country’s deficit is at a record high, while Democrats are arguing that the investment in infrastructure is necessary to get our nation’s unemployed back to work. Given that it has been proven that high speed rail can increase jobs, significantly reduce pollution by replacing the volume of short-haul flights, cut our dependence on oil, reduce congestion on our freeways, and encourage sustainable land-use and development patterns — our vote is obvious.

3. Bike lanes increase: While our cars are getting significantly more efficient, an increasing number of people are also beginning to walk and bike more. Bike-share programs have also started (or are in the process of starting) in Washington D.C, New York City, Denver, San Francisco, etc. Biking in places like New York City rose by nearly 30 percent and over 200 miles of bike lanes were installed in the city. Transportation Secretary Ray Lahood also distributed the majority of TIGER II grants — nearly $300 million in federal money — towards building streetcars, bus rapid transit, bike projects and other initiatives. In fact, LaHood famously said that the government was going to give bicycling and walking the same importance as automobiles in transportation planning and federal funds. A growing number of Generation X are also refraining from buying a car to begin with.

4. China’s transportation emissions go through the roof: The first ever report on pollution caused by vehicle emissions in China was released this year and it confirms what we’ve known all along — the country’s booming car sales have had a devastating effect on the environment, reports AFP. Over a third of the 113 cities surveyed did not meet national air standards, as the number of vehicles in the country rose to 170 million. That’s almost a 10 percent increase from last year, and 25 times the number from 1980. “Vehicle exhaust emissions exceeded 51 million tonnes in 2009, including more than 40 million tonnes of carbon monoxide, nearly five million tonnes of hydrocarbons and about six million tonnes of nitrogen oxide,” AFP quoted the report saying. Last year alone China sold 13.64 million cars, up almost 46 percent from 2008. That number is expected to rise by an additional 25 percent this year to 17 million. But that drop was offseted by a significant rise in emissions in China and India by 9 and 6 percent. China’s CO2 emissions rose by 9 percent last year, and China is now responsible for 24 percent of the global fossil emissions of CO2. The country beat the U.S. as the highest emitter of greenhouse gases recently too.

5. Cap and Trade goes out of the door: The energy bill that was passed in Congress with great promise, made absolutely no headway in the Senate. Any possibility of a carbon cap initiative was, of course, out of the window, but even a limited bill directed only at capping emissions at power plants didn’t make it through. The only thing that we saw got passed was a bipartisan bill that dealt with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and few other fuel efficiency upgrades.

6. Google launches a driverless car: While don’t expect to sitting in one of these anytime soon, Google announced an autonomous, driverless car that would do all its driving based on data-recording cameras and pre-recorded maps. There are many potential benefits from cars that drive themselves, such as tuning the engine to coast as efficiently possible, increasing the capacity of existing roads and the unassailable fact that machines don’t get tired, they don’t get drunk and they don’t get distracted. Of course, machines are still machines — and at the end of the day, they break. But come on, wouldn’t it be great to just sit in your own car after a crazy New Year’s Eve party and know that you won’t get pulled over for a breath analyzer test?