Sir - You rightly warn that the redevelopment of the Westgate will cause disruption and be unsightly during construction (Editorial, November 16).

Others of us are far more worried by the promise of an unsightly Westgate and West End once construction is complete, and with no plans to reduce traffic we can reasonably be sure that today's gridlock will continue, or get worse.

In one of those twilights between sleep and waking, I half-dreamed of a West End designed as a complete project by an internationally-renowned architect, with a traffic-free, tree-lined avenue leading from a remodelled Bonn Square to a transport interchange at a new station at the Oxpens, with an electric rapid transit system to bring to the centre those who have no choice but to live outside Oxford or in its suburbs, creating a fraction of today's carbon and other footprints from cars and buses.

My memories of Lisbon Oriente station, Montpellier (France) and Aachen (Germany) had got somewhat confused. The castle area has shown us that bold developments can be outstandingly successful. Oxford and its universities have little problem in attracting billions of pounds for new development. The kudos from a co-ordinated West End development in Oxford should attract the very best of the world's architects.

Alas, I fear we are on track for a series of unrelated and undistinguished buildings from developers' hack architects; the chance will be missed to set up a transport system to solve Oxford's notorious traffic problems and to make huge reductions in carbon dioxide release that we now know are required.

Andrew M. Pritchard, North Hinksey