Transport Secretary Mairi McAllan failed to confirm if an expected update on dualling the A9 will include dates for the remaining sections waiting to be upgraded.
The major road project has been hit by delays with pressure mounting on the Scottish Government to take action to speed up progress.
Dualling the A9 between Perth and Inverness will no longer be completed by 2025 with a revised target timescale yet to be published.
In Holyrood on Tuesday, Ms McAllan told a committee of MSPs it is her “intention” to outline “next steps” for the A9 by autumn this year.
But she failed to confirm if this will include dates for delivering the remaining nine out of 11 sections of the road that still need to be dualled.
Areas still to be completed include Pitlochry to Killiecrankie and Pass of Birnam to Tay Crossing.
‘Still decisions to be made’
The SNP first promised to dual the A9 in 2007 but the government admitted earlier this year this was “simply no longer achievable” because of economic pressure.
Campaigners have been inundating the Scottish Government with demands to upgrade the road after more than a dozen tragedies on the route last year.
Asked if the A9 dualling programme will be provided in autumn, the SNP minister said: “I’m not going to pre-empt what I will tell parliament because there’s still decisions to made.
“There’s still a great deal of work ongoing. I will set out, with a backstop of autumn this year, the next steps of the dualling programme.”
First Minister Humza Yousaf came under pressure earlier this month to explain why an announcement on the A9 upgrade was quietly shelved.
MSPs expected an update on June 12 about the latest timetable for the long-awaited project to fully dual the route between Inverness and Perth.
But the SNP leader said he had paused the update so his rejigged transport team can take another look at the details.
‘Simply not good enough’
Perthshire MSP Murdo Fraser said: “This remarkably vague response today from the new transport secretary is simply not good enough.
“We had far too many deaths on single-carriageway stretches of this road last year, and local residents along with road safety campaigners are rightly demanding to know when the next sections of the A9 will be dualled.
“We have only seen 11 miles of the A9 between Perth and Inverness dualled so far, which is frankly pathetic, and an insult to communities in Perthshire and the Highlands who have waited too long to receive confirmation of when the next stages of dualling will take place.
“Unfortunately, we will see more deaths on this road until the whole dualling project is completed but it is looking more and more like this may not happen, or, if it does, it will be well into the future.”
