Following a year that saw more than its fair share of bus crashes in New York, state Governor Andrew Cuomo has found an extra $1 million to fund an initiative that would completely change the way buses are inspected.

The New York State Department of Transportation reportedly conducts more than 150,000 bus inspections every year. When the changes Cuomo has proposed goes into effect it will change the previous method of inspecting every bus several times a year to a performance-based system in which the companies with the worst safety records receive more inspections than those companies which have a safer record. All companies will still get at least two inspections a year, even those with the very best safety records.

The move is meant to increase bus safety in the state. This past year Cuomo suspended the operating licenses of 8 charter bus companies after they repeated failed numerous inspections.

Last year the New York Department of Transportation made 2,000 surprise roadside inspections and state police issued 197 tickets. Follow this clamp down, 173 bus drivers and 143 buses were taken off the road. After a similar crack down in April 2010, almost 100 buses and more than 100 bus drivers were busted by these same surprise inspections. In what came as a surprise to many, some of these drivers had multiple licenses under aliases and criminal records.

All of this, plus multiple deaths and injuries related to bus crashes, led to public outrage at the state of the commercial bus industry, forcing Cuomo to look deep into the budget and find a way to improve the existing bus inspection system.

Millions of tourists and visitors sue New York state commercial bus lines to travel. A sense of the system being unsafe in any way could cause serious economic repercussions for the state and everyone who lives there. By increasing bus safety Cuomo hopes to avoid a situation which not only results in more possible deaths or injuries, but also causes harm to the bottom line in the New York state budget.