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.
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.
If eminent domain paid just compensation would the payouts be trillions? The previous question was unclear.
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 "new roads" 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.
2018 saw 87 cases of eminent domain in colorado - most of them for buildings no longer deemed habitable and condemned to be torn down, then re-developed. The federal government lists 1001 real property cases filed by the US in the same year's report, 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.
Under Eminent Domain, the seized land can be used for any public use. And in strange cases, it happens even to what used to be a private road and shopping complex in front of Walt Disney World - to build an interchange.
