YOUNGSTOWN — The city’s 10-seat, self-driving electric bus — that is required under state law to have a driver — should be on the road by mid-February and could be off the road by June.

The city’s board of control approved a $14,388 increase Thursday for the autonomous bus, which now costs $696,435.

The increase is for tracking software and to modify the route to avoid a pending improvement project on Boardman Street, said Charles Shasho, deputy director of public works.

The bus will travel along Federal Street from the Western Reserve Transit Authority station on the corner of Fifth Avenue to South Avenue, but it will need to use other streets to turn around, Shasho said.

The bus route is a distance of about 0.6 of 1 mile.

The $696,435 contract with Transdev Service of Lombard, Illinois, has the company providing a driver for the airport shuttle-sized vehicle through June, Shasho said. State law requires all buses, even those that drive themselves, to have a driver on them at all times.

If the electric bus proves successful after June, WRTA would continue to operate it though it would remain the property of the city, Shasho said.

If it isn’t a success, the bus likely would join the city’s fleet of vehicles but no longer run along Federal Street, Shasho said.

“Downtown is only three blocks long,” Shasho said.

The bus hasn’t arrived yet as it’s undergoing testing by Transdev before coming to Youngstown, Shasho said. But it should be in the city and operating by mid-February, he said.

Shasho expressed disappointment that state law doesn’t permit the driverless bus to not have a driver.

Shasho said the city had to purchase the autonomous bus as a condition of receiving $10.85 million in federal funding through the Better Utilizing Investments to Leverage Development (BUILD) grant that was part of a $28.5 million project to improve several downtown streets that began in July 2020.

The SMART2 (Strategic and Sustainable, Medical and Manufacturing, Academic and Arts, Residential and Recreation and Technology and Training) Network project caused several of the city’s main downtown streets to be closed for many months and adversely impacted numerous businesses.

An improvement to Fifth Avenue between West Federal Street and Eastbound Service Road tied up traffic for more than a year before it finished in July 2020.

Other work as part of this project was done to Federal, Front, Commerce and South Phelps streets and Rayen Avenue.

The work included repaving, realigning curbs, reducing driving lanes, expanding sidewalks, new crosswalks and islands, and changes to parking.

Construction delays — some of them extensive — occurred on every street involved with the project with the worst on Federal Street, the main downtown thoroughfare.