2000 Convention

We are right to court the 2000 Democratic Convention (editorial, April 25) and we should hold the MTA to its schedule of completing the Red Line to the Valley by May 2000. Visitors will not only be smitten by sparkling new amenities downtown, but will be truly startled to discover that steps away from the convention or their downtown hotels, they can zip without cars to major regional attractions like Universal City or Hollywood and see the rebirth of neighborhoods like the NoHo Arts District, Los Feliz Village and Wilshire Center.

If the MTA board could drop its self-defeating parochial skirmishes and actually finish something on time, it would signal a new positive message to Washington and the world and would be a calling card of a city embracing a new maturity for the next century.

ROGER CHRISTENSEN

Sherman Oaks