Money is fungible, it's pretty unreasonable to say that a given housing development is required because the state needs money to fund a railway. They could rais

Money is fungible, it's pretty unreasonable to say that a given housing development is required because the state needs money to fund a railway. They could raise taxes or what have you. (My preferred solution would be land value tax, which would make the railway self-funding, but that's a bigger argument).