Amir Khajepour, an engineering professor and researcher with the University of Waterloo’s Autonomous Vehicle Research and Intelligence Lab, says self-driving vehicles could save municipalities money down the road by allowing them to cut staff expenses — and potentiallyby operating on-demand, rather than continuously. “If the system is fully autonomous, as soon as there is a huge surge in terms of the number of passengers, you can run five of them right away, continuously, and then, as soon as it drops, you park two of them,” he says. “This is not something that you can do with a full-driver system, because what are you going to do with the other two drivers? They come for two hours, and then they go home?” But, for now, cost is a barrier. “Obviously these buses are more expensive,” says Khajepour.