Sir, FOXCAN is pro-canal, not anti-car (Letters, May 5). Many of us love motor vehicles but also want Oxford Canal Basin reopened. Worcester Street car park's 180 spaces are useful but not indispensable. There are 1,465 other car park spaces within walking distance at Abbey Place, Gloucester Street, Oxpens and Westgate. Worcester Street car park dates from before Oxford became the world pioneer in park-and-ride services. This car park should now be obsolete.

Canal regeneration brings economic growth, permanent jobs, and raises property values by at least 20 per cent. It has improved many urban centres including Banbury and Birmingham. Numerous local councils make shrewd investments in local canals, such as Stroud which is part-funding restoration of the Stroudwater Navigation. Britain's canal network is growing as rapidly now as it did two centuries ago. Canals are a significant modern leisure business. Oxford is a national tourist centre, but its best canal asset is wasted under asphalt.

Bill Leonard misrepresents FOXCAN's proposal as "a small pond on the Worcester Street car park" (Letters, April 21) and on this basis asks "whether the resulting turning basin' would be large enough to turn canal boats" (May 5). But he knows how the wharves were laid out, so he should know that narrowboats had room to turn at the junction between the goods wharf and coal wharf.

Only part of the coal wharf is lost under Nuffield College. I suspect that under the car park the historic 1790 foundations of the goods wharf, warehouse, part of the coal wharf and a demolished road bridge across the coal wharf all survive. This treasure of industrial archaeology would increase visitor interest, and a reopened Georgian canal basin would complement the regenerated Oxford Castle as a valuable leisure district in our city's economy.

Hugh Jaeger, Oxford