Taoyuan's program to flatten the covered walkways in front of shops has slowed down every year since 2021, which is bad news for pedestrians and people using wheelchairs or strollers.

• The city has fixed about 17 kilometers of walkway since the program started in 2010, but yearly progress has fallen by more than half since 2021.
• The main reason is consent: the walkways are privately owned, so every shop owner has to sign off, and owners are increasingly saying no.
• Shops worry about dust, noise, a week of disruption, and losing the ramps, raised floors, storage, and parking spots they built there.
• One refusal can break the whole stretch, since the point is a continuous flat surface, and complicated ownership or absent landlords make talks harder.
• City councillors pressed the government at a council session to find the bottleneck and keep the program moving.

Outlook: The city plans to focus this year on busy downtown and metro-station streets, using AI mockups and day-and-night construction to win owners over.