A campaign group has been formed to fight a decision to delay the dualling of 2.5 miles (4km) of the A30 from 2008 to 2016 at the earliest.
At a public meeting on Friday, the South West Regional Assembly said the plans for Bodmin Moor would be delayed because they were not high priority.
Residents and councillors say the delay will make the road even more dangerous and stifle the local economy's growth.
The assembly said it would review its road priorities in 18 months' time.
Resource limits
More than 50 people attended the public meeting on Friday night at Cardinham Parish Hall to express their concerns about the postponement.
The A30 from Temple to Higher Carblake across Bodmin Moor is the last stretch of the single carriageway across the moor, and is a well-known bottleneck.
The chairman of Blisland Parish Council, Arthur Ludgate, said the change in priority had angered many people and promoted the plan for a campaign group.
The assembly's Transport Policy Manager, Chris Mitchell, defended the decision, but admitted that it would not looked at for some time.
He said: "We have a problem that we only have a certain amount of resource and we have to decide where that resource will go.
"We carried out some discussion with stakeholders in the region and there was a regional event.
"Given that we were only given a few months to carry out this prioritisation process, we did what we could and we looked at all of the issues, and it is truth is that some of the areas with issues will remain unresolved."
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