Sir – Michael Boyd is correct in asserting (Letters, May 6) that there is a footbridge in the background of the photograph that you showed of the North Oxford Trap Grounds Allotment level crossing.

To get from the Trap Grounds car park to the allotments using that footbridge, though, involves a detour of something like half a mile. This includes several hundred yards along ‘dog-poo alley’, a narrow path where people allow their pets to dump on the way to Port Meadow, and make no attempt to clear up the mess as the bye-laws dictate. Under current conditions I’d not be prepared to wheel a wheelbarrow along that route to my wife’s allotment.

Now maybe if a gentle ramp were to be built from the car park directly up to the footbridge, and a similar ramp down to the allotments on the other side of the railway, the situation would improve.

One would need to couple this with rigorous enforcement of dog-poo regulations (I prefer the Anglo-Saxon word myself, but my wife prohibits it!).

All this would cost money and it seems a whole lot simpler to go along with the status quo, therefore, and to resist closure for reasons of convenience for the railway.

As things are the approach is very direct, the level crossing is perfectly safe and there is totally adequate visibility and audibility in both directions.

Because of the proximity of Oxford Station the trains are going slow anyway and there is a very high and secure fence that isolates the crossing from the primary school that Mr Boyd mentions.

After all, Port Meadow was common land long before the railways were built.

Professor Gerald Elliott, Oxford