Staff photo / David Skolnick A $696,435, 10-seat autonomous bus owned by Youngstown sits unused in a Western Reserve Transit Authority garage. It was on the road for less than five months.

YOUNGSTOWN — After less than five months on the road, the city parked its $696,435 self-driving electric bus in a garage as it struggles to figure out what to do with the 10-seat vehicle.

City officials repeatedly have said they never wanted the autonomous bus, which is required to have a driver under state law. But the city was required to buy it in order to get a $10.85 million federal Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grant used to make a total of $28.5 million worth of improvements to several main downtown streets.

The bus, the size of an airport shuttle vehicle, drove up and down Federal Street – a distance of about 0.6 of a mile – from mid-February until it was pulled from the road at the end of June.

As part of a $696,435 contract with Transdev Service of Lombard, Illinois, the company provided a driver for the vehicle until the end of June.

After that, the city would have had to pay an additional fee to the company, which it chose not to do, said Charles Shasho, deputy director of public works.

State law requires all buses, even those that drive themselves, to have a driver present at all times in case something goes wrong. The driver of this particular vehicle also had to get out on the driver’s side door to open the main door on the other side of the bus, as it doesn’t have automatic doors.

Another issue is that the electric bus had to be charged during the day, Shasho said.

“It’s a nice vehicle, but I’m not sure the autonomous part is all that it’s cracked up to be,” he said. “It’s a good idea. We hope it can continue with WRTA (Western Reserve Transit Authority) using it as a shuttle. We want to see it continue to run. We’ll see what happens.”

The bus is parked inside the WRTA’s garage on Mahoning Avenue.

Shasho said city officials haven’t decided what to do with the electric bus but want to work out a deal with WRTA.

“We want to put it back into use and have it used for a more popular route with an agreement with WRTA,” Shasho said.

City officials don’t want to lease the vehicle because it would still be liable for any accidents as its owner.

City Finance Director Kyle Miasek said: “The finance department, along with the law department, is exploring and researching how we may potentially declare it surplus and in essence, sell it to WRTA. We want WRTA to use it and provide public transit service downtown and to Youngstown State University.”

If city council agrees to declare the bus surplus property, the value of it probably has to be determined. Since the bus is only a few months old, it’s likely that its value is close to the $696,435 purchase price.

WRTA Executive Director Dean Harris said his agency would be interested in borrowing the city’s autonomous bus for a few months for its Fifth Avenue route between its downtown station and St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital because the autonomous vehicle it uses isn’t working properly and is out of service. It is currently parked next to the city’s bus.

But Harris said WRTA isn’t interested in paying any money for the city bus.

In order to obtain the $10.85 million federal grant, the city and numerous partners provided about $18 million in money and services.

Among that was $700,000 provided by WRTA.

While the WRTA money wasn’t specifically for the autonomous bus, Harris said, “We technically already paid for it once. We feel we paid for that part of the project.”

Just a few weeks after WRTA’s six-seat autonomous bus was on the road, it was pulled because once or twice a day it went into “limp mode,” causing it to stop, Harris said. The problem hasn’t been resolved, he said.

WRTA received a $1.2 million federal grant in 2020 for its bus.

With its autonomous bus not operating, WRTA is using a regular eight-seat bus for the Fifth Avenue route, Harris said.

WRTA wants to work out an arrangement to use the city’s bus for that route, but won’t pay anything for it, Harris said.

Also, Miasek’s expectation that the city-owned bus would remain in Youngstown if given to WRTA is unlikely.

Harris said: “We could probably take ownership of the city bus and use it for the countywide service.”

The driver has to get out every time someone wants to get on the city bus because that person cannot get past all of the equipment to the right of the driver’s seat. Harris said the bus doesn’t match what WRTA wants to do long-term in Youngstown.

If the city and WRTA cannot come to an agreement to have the vehicle given to the agency, Harris said, “The city can keep the bus. If they don’t want to rent it to us, OK, they can keep it. After these few months, we really don’t need it, but we could possibly use it countywide.”

As for how long WRTA will keep the city bus parked at its Mahoning Avenue garage, Harris said: “It’s not a problem to keep it by us, but they’ll have to eventually make a decision. We could use it one way or the other, but I don’t want to pay for it. If they can give it to us, we’ll take it. But they might not be able to do that.”