No, roads are not paid for by car taxes and fees in the US. Car taxes and fees are nowhere near enough to build highways. (In Europe actually this is closer to being true due to massively higher car taxes, massively higher gasoline taxes, and ubiquitous toll roads).
Obviously depends on where in the US you are, but typically is estimated that there would have to be a 50c tax per gallon to make highways self-paying. For places where road construction is particularly expensive (mountains, Alaska and Hawaii, etc) that doesn't even come close.
Not that I think there's anything wrong with that - subsidising efficient transport is a perfectly legitimate role of government as it is vital for commerce.
> Obviously depends on where in the US you are, but typically is estimated that there would have to be a 50c tax per gallon to make highways self-paying.
Let's go with that number. But first....
> For places where road construction is particularly expensive (mountains, Alaska and Hawaii, etc) that doesn't even come close.
And in other places, 50c a gallon is way more than it takes to make highways self-paying. That's how averages of different numbers work - some are higher than the average while others are lower.
The cited document says that the average fuel tax in the US is 38c/gallon as of a couple of years ago. That does not include sales taxes, which in CA are currently around 20c/gallon, for a total of 58c/gallon, or 8c/gallon over the average required. In the past, CA got less per gallon because the prices were lower, and other states have lower tax rates, but we're not done counting the car revenues and we're pretty close to 50c/gallon.
Taxes on fuel purchases don't include car taxes, taxes on car goods, fines levied on car misuse (which exceed enforcement costs), income taxes on folks providing car services, and so on. (Rail advocates count taxes on folks whose jobs are enabled by transportation and property taxes next to train stations. I'm not counting that for cars, but will note that they would considerably increase the car revenue numbers.)
That document concedes that counting such revenues would mean that govts make money on roads. That's why said document goes to considerable lengths to argue that certain taxes and fees paid by car/truck folk to drive shouldn't be counted. The reasons range from that money is deposited in the general fund, which is curious since the supposed subsidies come from the general fund, to car drivers have to pay something if they did something else, in which case we'd consider those fees/taxes as being associated with some other cause.
Obviously depends on where in the US you are, but typically is estimated that there would have to be a 50c tax per gallon to make highways self-paying. For places where road construction is particularly expensive (mountains, Alaska and Hawaii, etc) that doesn't even come close.
EG. see
http://pubs.its.ucdavis.edu/download_pdf.php?id=1139
Not that I think there's anything wrong with that - subsidising efficient transport is a perfectly legitimate role of government as it is vital for commerce.