Yes! Local control is always better. They know where the money will best be spent and they have greater accountability to the local taxpayers.

Neil Smith, in The Probability Broach, touches on this but doesn't address the "who builds them" part of the question. He does mention that they are paid for by tolls [essentially a user fee] and that one road company lowered its speed limit to 70 mph and almost went broke because no one would drive on their roads with such a low limit. [They drive hovercraft, BTW] I also picked up the idea that if the roads weren't maintained, people wouldn't drive on them.
I don't know enough about the building-and-maintenance costs of roads to address the question specifically, so rely on real life experiences and reason. There are lots of ways to finance things, once you remove the extra added costs of regulating them. Remember
that bumper sticker - "I long for the day when schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber"? In the same book, there is a table at an outdoor event, staffed by the militia, to raise money for new equipment.
There's gotta be a way.....

I have never lived anywhere that mass transit or bicycle lanes would work for me, yet I have paid for a lot of them.

Remove the laws and regulations and privatize them and let the users pay.

I saw a congressman interviewed today who has a bill that would reduce the excise tax 10cents a gallon. He said the states and local area should determine what their needs are and tax accordingly.

well, except there are so many laws and regulations, building a new road is a high bar to hurdle

I think they should charge for roads by supply and demand, increasing the price to the point where they never get clogged with cars hardly moving. If that makes them really expensive, that's an incentive for someone to build a new road, relieving the congestion and high prices, and for people who so desire to move to a walkable area.