Eminent domain payout
<p>America builds 400,000 acres of road a year. The country has a billion acres. Furthermore usually about a mile from a road is seized for sound barriers and other services which puts the total at 15 million acres.</p>
<p>In other words 2% of the land area of America is eminent domained every year. There are no buildings in New York older than 1800 because literally all the land has been seized.</p>
<p>If eminent domain paid just compensation would the payouts be trillions? The previous question was unclear.</p>

<h1>Your numbers are off</h1>
<p>The states don't seize a mile next to every road, as farms don't suffer from traffic noise. They also don't seize land when they just rebuild a road, but that is still part of the 400k acres of road. In fact, most &quot;new roads&quot; are rebuilding old ones, and a huge part of the rest is through undeveloped land that is owned by the state or farmers - and thus cheap and doesn't need a mile-wide strip of noise protection.</p>
<h2><a href="https://politics.stackexchange.com/a/34363/29187">Eminent domain cases are RARE</a></h2>
<p>2018 saw <a href="https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Administration/Planning_and_Analysis/Annual_Statistical_Reports/2018/FY2018FINAL.pdf" rel="nofollow noreferrer">87 cases of eminent domain in colorado</a> - most of them for buildings no longer deemed habitable and condemned to be torn down, then re-developed. The federal government lists <a href="http://www.uscourts.gov/statistics/table/c-4/statistical-tables-federal-judiciary/2018/06/30" rel="nofollow noreferrer">1001 real property cases filed by the US in the same year's report</a>, not indicating what kind of development or redevelopment would happen there, or if it is Eminent Domain or some other type of real property case.</p>
<p>Under Eminent Domain, the seized land can be used for <em>any</em> public use. And in strange cases, it happens even to what used to be a private road and shopping complex in front of <a href="https://floridapolitics.com/archives/458822-crossroads-gone-disney-history/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Walt Disney World</a> - to build an interchange.</p>

united-states eminent-domain