Automakers didn’t build the self-driving car: Google did. That’s a big problem for them. Hoping to catch up, Ford, Toyota, and Volkswagen are betting on academics. Along with Nvidia, Samsung, Qualcomm and Panasonic, they’re each giving $300,000 to the University of California at Berkeley to fund artificial intelligence research.

Sacramento RT employs approximately 941 people locally, 77 percent of whom are dedicated to operations and maintenance of the bus and light rail systems. John Haswell has been a light rail vehicle technician at Sac RT for the past seven years and says he is “genuinely and thoroughly thrilled to be working on the light rail vehicles.

When the new Golden 1 Center opens its doors in October of this year, several thousand people will flood into downtown Sacramento. They’ll bring their friends, their Kings jerseys, their money and perhaps most worryingly for those who work along busy streets in the area — their cars.

It’s been quite a year! Now that the champagne has been popped, gone flat and you’ve had time to recover, take a look at our most widely read local stories from 2015:

Last year we reported on the massive transportation shift taking place in West Sacramento (“Bridging the Divide” by John Blomster, October 2014) Check out some of the progress that has been made since then:

As Governor Jerry Brown is in Paris urging other political leaders to follow his lead in curbing global warming, the chief executive of California’s largest oil company said the state’s policies “unambiguously raise energy costs and do nothing about greenhouse-gas emissions.”

California is counting on private companies to kick in as much as $35.5 billion toward the most expensive public-works project in U.S. history, a proposed high-speed rail line linking San Francisco with Los Angeles. Banks and other contractors who’ve studied the plan say not so fast.

Sacramento dining is about to get a little more convenient.

California’s $184-billion pension fund for school teachers chided Volkswagen AG for rigging some diesel engines to cheat on U.S. emission tests and said it is evaluating its exposure to losses from the scandal.

California Governor Jerry Brown abandoned a plan to cut gasoline use in half as part of an ambitious bill to combat climate change, after oil companies and business groups waged a multi-million dollar campaign against the effort.