Station-hopping on Vancouver's sleek new SkyTrains
The glass gable forming the upper portion of the window wall accentuates the room's lofty height and lets in a flood of daylight. Opposite the couch in the family area, a curving alcove echoes the contour of the kitchen counter and the wall and soffit above it.On the other hand, you might expect John Taylor, a physicist the New Scientist called one of the top 20 scientists in the world, to be suspicious of psychics who attempted to avoid his close scrutiny. Yet his 1975 book Superminds enthusiastically described his experiments with "Geller children," kids who could bend forks and spoons "psychokinetically," just like uri Geller. The trouble was, they could only do it when no one was looking. Taylor even gave this aversion to scientific scrutiny a name: the "shyness effect." He accomodatingly designed "sealed" tubes with the objects to be bent placed inside, and sent them home with the children. When they returned bent the next day, still sealed in the tubes, he considered this proof of psychic abilities.Photo: Color strips mark two Expo sites, on False Creek and Burrard Inlet. Both are served by SkyTrainStation-hopping tourThe fate of Vancouver's new rapid transit, called SkyTrain, presages projects across the border. Portland's Banfield light rail is scheduled to open this fall; Seattle soon may begin construction of a downtown transit tunnel intended for buses now, light rail trains later.Taylor refused to see the magician, the Amazing Randi, who felt he could explain the shyness effect in more prosaic terms; cheating. Perhaps Taylor himself had become afraid of close scrutiny. Randi called on him anyway, disguised as a reporter, and found Taylor particularly easy to fool. In his book The Truth About Uri Geller, Randi describes having no trouble at all opening and closing the crudely sealed tubes in Taylor's presence, even managing to bend an aluminum bar while Taylor was momentarily distracted, scratch on it "Bent by Randi," and replace it among Taylor's collection undetected!The designer was Richard Elmore of Palo Alto, California.Trains travel up to 60 mph, and stay in stations only 10 to 30 seconds. Emergency operators ride aboard each train, and station attendants answer questions and help direct passengers."You might think of it as a little BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) without drivers and with some pioneering technology,' says B.C. Transit spokesman Bob Egby.RECENTLY ON DISPLAY in bookstores throughout America was a flashy paperback entitled Somebody Else Is On the Moon. The cover depicts an astronaut coming upon huge tracks in the lunar soil and pipes sticking out of a crater. "For 200 years astronomers have suspected -- now we know!" proclaims the blurb. "Incredible proof of an alien race on the moon! The evidence: Immense mechanical rigs, some over a mile long. Lights, flares, vehicle tracks, towers, pipes, conduits."But it's appropriate that this new technology comes to Vancouver now. Its peninsular downtown, often choked by rush-hour traffic, is much in need of alternatives to the automobile. And it's no coincidence that service began on the eve of Expo 86, the world's fair opening here on May 2, devoted to advanced transportation.Photo: Heading out of hazy downtown Vancouver, two-car SkyTrain sweeps around a bend in its elevated guideway at 60 mphNew (Canadian) technology at workGft off at Broadway Station for a look at Commercial Drive, Vancouver's "Italian Street' with import shops, espresso bars, restaurants, and delis. From Main Street Station, stroll into Chinatown and its Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden.The 21-kilometer (14-mile) system provides service along the city's busiest commuter route, Kingsway (Provincial Highway 1A-99A), from suburban New Westminster southeast of Vancouver into the heart of the city.Articulated axles allow trains to corner at high speed with less wheel wear and noise.But BART cars are heavier, the guideway is sturdier, and it carries some 300,000 people a day (mass transit) versus about 100,000 for SkyTrain (intermediate).The final blow to Taylor's shyness effect occurred when an alternative team of scientists decided to replicate Taylor's findings. Six of his metal-bending prodigies were tested in a room with one observer, who noticed no cheating even though "psychokinetic" metal-bending occurred repeatedly. But a hidden camera recorded the truth about the shyness effect, as reported by the investigators in the September 4, 1975, issue of the scientific journal Nature: "A put the rod under her foot and tried to bend it; B, E, and F used two hands to bend the spoon . . . while D tried to hide his hands under a table to bend the spoon." Today, Taylor has retracted many of his 1975 claims.When my father was investigating mediums, they often claimed that the spirits would stay away if there was a skeptic in the room. So if an investigator frisked the medium for gadgets, the spirits would fail to materialize. This is a very convenient explanation for why paranormal phenomena disappear when someone looks closely, and it is invoked in many ways by New Age theorists. The Amazing Randi is strongly disliked by the modern parapsychological community, and quite unwelcome at psychic demonstrations because of this "skeptics effect." A simpler explanation for why something isn't there when you look carefully is that it isn't there at all. Beware of anyone who says you mustn't look closely.Photo: Riders queue up at Granville Station next to underground shopping malls. Trains come every 4 minutes, doors open 10 to 30 secondsThe very abundance of such claims has made the "Search," as I like to call it, more difficult than ever. This Search is a tradition in my family. My grandfather was a devout Spiritualist. He held seances with the great mediums of the day -- Arthur Ford, Eileen Garrett -- and he took my mother and father to all the main Spiritualist camps. My parents were somewhat more skeptical. My father joined the American Society for Psychical Research and became one of its directors, investigating haunted houses, poltergeists, clairvoyants, and telepaths long before such investigators were guaranteed a spot on the Merv Griffin Show. Up in the attic we still have a set of fake spirit photographs a medium tried to pass off on him; spirit photography was the popular equivalent in those days of psychics' key-bending stunts now.End to end, it's a 27-minute ride including stops, less time than it takes to drive during rush hour. Planning is already well underway to extend the route several miles into the suburbs.Somebody else Is On the Moon contains a fine example of this fear of scrutiny. All of Leonard's moon constructions are at the very limit of photo resolution. When he had a chance to get better photos and to see the same terrain more clearly, he didn't.Some of my earliest reading materials were the "psychic books" that filled my family's bookcases. In one of them, I ran across an engraving of my great-grandfather, Emerson J. MacRobert, a Spiritualist in London, Ontario. At a time when such activities were scandalous and possibly illegal, he had held seances in a top-floor room of an old house with velvet tacked over the windows. Word got out and he was nearly forced from his post on the London School Board by righteous churchgoers. In my childhood reading, I also ran across an old reference to something called a "Treborcam Ethereal Healing Machine." The name is my own spelled backwards.From Burrard Station you can walk to city center restaurants and shops, theaters, museums, galleries. Or from downtown, ride to suburban Patterson Station, get off, and stroll a section of the emerging B.C. Parkway, a landscaped 12 1/2-mile-long strip beneath the guideway.This lifetime exposure to the paranormal has left me somewhat disillusioned and impatient with the intellectual credulity of my generation's. Still, I'm ready for the day when UFO creatures land on the White House lawn and are interviewed by Dan Rather, or when one single psychic somewhere can predict the future or reliably levitate paper clips so that anyone can see it's so. In the meantime, here, culled from all the time I've spent in the Search, are some guidelines by which to evaluate the flood of paranormal claims. These guidelines, carefully applied, should help eliminate the claims that are worthless -- at least 98 percent of them -- and will provide grounds for evaluating anything that's left.The most interesting thing about Somebody Else Is On the moon, however, is not its contents. It's the publisher's marketing strategy. The book was placed in bookstores among the offerings for" New Age" readers, including those like myself who like to think that we are in the vanguard, exploring important new ideas and philosophies. There, in fact, is where all sorts of crank literature has migrated. That's where it sells.Food-preparation and eating areas are illuminated by down lights in the kitchen ceiling and in soffits over the sitting and dining areas; track lights can add more nighttime brightness.For a folder describing attractions at each stop, write to B.C. Transit, Box 49297, Vancouver V7X 1P6.Or leave at Stadium Station and walk to B.C. Place to watch a sports event, or visit nearby Queen Elizabeth Theatre and Playhouse. At Granville Station, visitors can check out the 125 shops in two adjacent underground shopping complexes.
Photo: Riders queue up at Granville Station next to underground shopping malls. Trains come every 4 minutes, doors open 10 to 30 seconds
