Mr. Quinn has reasonable criticisms. Certainly the timing of the NDP's announcement is odd. It's like they were embarrassed to announce what they should have been promoting.

However, there's good arguments for a government to keep public transportation costs within a province-wide account, rather than a strict user-pay scenario on specific portions of it. Here's a simple example. A new resource is discovered that isn't served by an existing road. Extracting the resource might create many jobs and lead to considerable government revenue. But unless the government funds the road, private enterprise won't extract the resource. 

Except in specific circumstances, BC's taxpayers don't fund their transportation system on a user-pay basis. We BLEND the costs of transportation across the government's total revenue stream. That's not a bad way to do it, because it allows a government flexibility in allocating transportation funds where they will do the most good.