Episode 150: Putting the Trans in Transit with Katelyn Burns

Doug Gordon: If you’re a fan of this podcast, you know there are a lot of problems with cars, and one of the biggies is what they do to the environment. And with all the climate misinformation out there, it can be really hard to know what to believe or even what to do. Luckily, there’s an excellent podcast that’s all about this very issue. It’s called The Climate Denier’s Playbook, and it’s hosted by our friends Rollie Williams and Nicole Conlan. I happen to have Nicole right here.

Nicole Conlan: I happen to be here with you, Doug. Hi.

Doug: Hey. What a coincidence. I am a huge fan of your podcast, but since I have you right here, let me hit you with a hypothetical. Let’s say I am sitting next to you on an airplane, and I’m one of those annoying guys who ignores that you have your headphones on and you clearly want to zone out, and I start asking you, “What do you do?” What would you tell me The Climate Denier’s Playbook is all about?

Nicole Conlan: Well, first thing I’d wonder is why we weren’t taking a train. But then I’d tell you that my co-host, Rollie and I are both comedians with master’s degrees. Mine’s in urban planning, and Rollie’s is in climate and society. And in each episode of the podcast, we take on a major climate denial talking point and deconstruct it so that listeners are better equipped to fight back against misinformation campaigns.

Doug: Like the idea that more carbon is good for plants, or offshore wind turbines are killing whales.

Nicole Conlan: Exactly. And we’ve even done episodes on why electric cars won’t save us, and the absolutely wild conspiracy theories about 15-minute cities.

Doug: I love it, and I know our listeners will, too. You can find The Climate Denier’s Playbook wherever you listen to podcasts, so go check it out and download a bunch of episodes for your next long plane ride.

Nicole Conlan: Train ride.

Doug: Right. Train ride. God, why don’t we have good trains in this country?

Nicole Conlan: Ooh, actually, that’d be a really good episode.

Katelyn Burns: There’s something in the systemic nature of transit and urban planning that I think hits a certain note for a wide range of trans people who really appreciate having a regular transit routine or having an efficient transit system in their city that services their neighborhood. I don’t know that that’s unique to trans people necessarily, but I think that we are all primed to have need of a transit system that works for us in some way more so than the general population. And that’s why it seems like every other trans person online is geeking out about trains.

Sarah Goodyear: Welcome to The War on Cars. I’m Sarah Goodyear, here in the studio in Brooklyn. My co-host Doug Gordon is joining me from the great city of Chicago.

Doug: Yes. This studio recording is powered by matzah, because it’s Passover and I am visiting my in-laws with my kids and my wife, and we’re having a good time.

Sarah: And Chicago is amazing, right?

Doug: Awesome city, love it. Been walking around today. Took the El. It’s great.

Sarah: Really quickly before we get started, just a reminder that The War on Cars is on Patreon at Patreon.com/thewaroncarspod. We are an independent podcast, so please help us out by signing up for just $3 a month.

Doug: Yeah, we’d really appreciate it. Thanks.

Sarah: And then before we really get going, we have some actual news, right, Doug?

Doug: Yes, very big news. As many of you know because we’ve mentioned it on the podcast before, we wrote a book. And we finally have a title and a publication date. So drumroll, please. I promise I’m not gonna put in, like, a fake drum roll effect here, but Sarah, do you wanna do the honors?

Sarah: The book is called Life After Cars.

Doug: How about that?

Sarah: Yes.

Doug: Life After Cars.

Sarah: I love that so much. And it will be published by Thesis, which is an imprint of Penguin Random House, on Tuesday, October 21, 2025, if we’re all still here. [laughs]

Doug: Well, it’s coming up soon—sooner than I think we all really believe. So yeah, October 21, 2025 is our publication date. Maybe we should just talk very briefly about the title, because I think a lot of people, our Patreon folks especially, probably are surprised to hear that it is not called The War on Cars. First of all, we love the title, so we should start there. But do we want to talk really briefly about why it is not called The War on Cars?

Sarah: Well, I think, you know, The War on Cars is the name we came up with for this podcast, which we started seven years ago, almost. And the book is more than the podcast in a lot of ways. It allows us to get deeper and to kind of stretch ourselves, and so it seemed appropriate that the book would have a different title. And it’s also a title that points to the future. It’s a title that is kind of giving us something to strive for. I love it. Life After Cars. And on the cover, which you all can now go online and see, it just looks so good.

Doug: Yes. You’ll see little nods to the podcast in the color scheme of the cover. You can go to LifeAfterCars.com to check it out. I just want to give a quick shout out to the illustrator who did the cover, Joel Holland. He did a book I really like, which is Sketches of Storefronts of New York City. So a lot of your famous storefronts, I think, Katz’s Delicatessen, for example, but also a lot of regular storefronts like bodegas. He just did a real bang-up job with this cover. It really speaks to, I think, what the book is about. It’s really great.

Sarah: Yeah, I just love it. So that’s a huge bonus for us. I mean, just to love the cover of the book so much, it just feels—it just feels really right. So can’t wait to show it to all of you, and go and check it out. LifeAfterCars.com.

Doug: And Sarah, another thing I’m really excited about, and I know you are too, is our book tour, which is gonna take us all over North America. We are already working on events in San Francisco, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Minneapolis, Houston, a few other cities that are already in the works, but I won’t say that much about. We’re hoping to line up a lot more, so that’s gonna be a big thing that’s gonna be happening over the next few months as we plan our book tour.

Sarah: One way that we’re doing the tour is we are connecting with local bike and safe streets advocacy organizations in all these cities, and we’re gonna work with them to create these events.

Doug: We have a live show in Minneapolis coming up, I think two days after this episode drops. And that’s gonna be a good model for us. We’re teaming up with Our Streets out there. It’s a fundraiser for Our Streets. Obviously we’re selling tickets, and when we do our book tour, we want to sell as many books as possible and meet listeners and readers, but we also really want to help local organizations raise money and generate attention for their campaigns because we know people are working on all kinds of really amazing stuff and need the support. And we hope that when the book is out and we can come out, we can just generate a lot of excitement and enthusiasm for what you’re all doing. Because The War on Cars is nothing without the work that people are doing in their local communities. So if you are part of an advocacy organization or other group related to anything we cover on the podcast—climate, urbanism, transportation, safe streets—send us an email: TheWaronCars [at] gmail [dot] com. We would love to figure out a way to work with you.

Sarah: Yeah. And the book itself aims to inspire people to continue advocating, to start advocating. And also, there’s a lot of examples of advocacy in there that people can use as models. And, you know, it’s all part of what we want to do with the podcast, and the book is to connect people to each other so that they can learn from each other’s victories and struggles, and just make this a better place in the way that we all want to make it.

Doug: And I want to plug our big publication party and live show, which is gonna be in Brooklyn at the Bell House. We will put up links and details when all of that is set. I should let you know that Patreon supporters, what we’re hoping to do with a lot of these shows is give you all early access to tickets. So stay tuned for that.

Sarah: Okay, so stay tuned for more about the book. There’s gonna be so much more, and you can go to LifeAfterCars.com to stay up on all of it. All right, let’s get to it. Today we have a great guest, and I know this is gonna be a really interesting conversation. Katelyn Burns is an independent journalist and co-founder of the brand new feminist media outlet The Flytrap, which describes itself as “Worker-owned, reader-supported, intersectional feminist journalism to unfuck your algorithm,” which I love. She is a columnist for MSNBC and Extra magazine. She also co-hosts the podcast Cancel Me, Daddy, which may have the best name in podcasts. Katelyn Burns, welcome to The War on Cars.

Katelyn Burns: Thank you for having me. This is honestly a dream come true for me. [laughs]

Sarah: Oh. Well, okay. So it’s a mutual feeling then.

Doug: I was gonna say I’m a big fan of Cancel Me, Daddy. I just listened to the Gavin Newsom episode, and if anybody deserves to be canceled right now, it’s the governor of California.

Katelyn Burns: His podcast is so weird! What is he doing?

Doug: What is he doing?

Katelyn Burns: We could probably talk about that for an hour. [laughs]

Doug: Absolutely.

Sarah: Just a little snuggling up to fascism, that’s all.

Doug: We’ll point people towards that episode of your podcast as a good current way in. It’s excellent.

Sarah: Okay, so Katelyn, you wrote something for The Flytrap recently that kind of blew my mind because it dives headfirst into a question that has occurred to me in the past, but that honestly I never thought that, like, is there a systemic way of looking at this, or is this something that can kind of legitimately be looked at? And then you wrote this piece and I was like, “Yes, I’ve been thinking about this, and I’ve never seen it explored this way anywhere else.” So that’s really cool. The question is in the title of the piece, “Why Are So Many Trans People Into Urban Planning?” That is the question. Why are so many trans people into urban planning? And so maybe you could start by telling us how you decided to write the piece.

Katelyn Burns: This is sort of a question that’s been bouncing around my head for a long time as a trans woman who is into urban planning and is kind of a transit geek. You can’t see it, it’s off camera, but I have a subway sign from the Boston T. I believe this stop is called Alewife.

Doug: Yes.

Katelyn Burns: I got a variation that says “Malewife” because I’m trans. But I’m like, somebody is selling this and it’s gotta be, like, trans people who are buying it, because that’s such a trans joke. I’m sure it’s a trans person selling the signs, too. I don’t know exactly who it is. So I’m like, I can’t be the only one. And you go online and there’s all kinds of transit memes, there’s a whole thing on trans Twitter, which is now Trans Bluesky, because we kind of all left, where if you are a trans person, especially a trans woman who rides a train, you’re obliged to take a selfie and post it online saying “trans on trains.” And this is a thing that was much more ubiquitous in sort of the good times, if—if we ever had any.

Sarah: Yeah.

Katelyn Burns: Which I would not classify current times as the good times. And you see this over and over and over again where, like, my trans friends or the people I follow who are trans online will go on extended rants about why don’t we have a transit system in my city that works for me, and why can’t we have more transit-oriented development? And things like this? And they’re getting into more and more advanced terminology and advocacy. And I’m like, this is definitely, like, a thing.

Sarah: I think you said that Ray Delahanty, CityNerd, who’s a friend of the show here, had said something about it on Bluesky as well?

Katelyn Burns: Yeah. So Ray made a post. I’m a longtime follower of his channel, by the way. I just consume everything he does. And he made a post on Bluesky in the middle of the sort of Trump deluge of anti-trans executive orders about how, like, he is not trans himself, but he feels like this is a minority worth sticking up for. You know, I don’t remember exactly what he said in his Bluesky post, but it was along those lines.

Doug: I think he had said that trans people don’t have the numbers to defend themselves, so we all have to stand up and help them and defend them. Yeah.

Katelyn Burns: And I made an offhand reply to him. And he and I have followed each other on social media for a while, and we interact every once in a while online. And I made a response to him saying, “You know, there are a lot of trans people who are into transit.” And he’s like, “That’s true. I’d love to make a video on it.” And in the course of waiting for him to make this video, I’m like, “You know, this is something I could probably do myself.” [laughs] And instead of a video, I made it into an article.

Sarah: So you put out a call for thoughts about this. And I think you wrote that as a journalist, you’ve never gotten this kind of feedback on any call that you’ve put out before.

Katelyn Burns: Yeah, somebody made a joke that asking for thoughts from trans transit heads, as we like to call ourselves sometimes, is like asking cats who are catnip enthusiasts to respond to a call.

Doug: [laughs]

Katelyn Burns: I had well over a hundred responses. And as a journalist, I want to feature everybody that responds to me, and I just couldn’t. The piece would have been book length if I had gotten just a single quote from everybody. So one of the more challenging parts of this was picking and choosing which quotes to include. I had people who are trans who work on transit for a living who I couldn’t quote because other people gave me better quotes, you know? So yeah, it was a really fun piece. Pieces like this are kind of why we formed The Flytrap in the first place, because it really lets me pursue passion projects that aren’t just what’s the bad news this week?

Sarah: Right. Right, exactly. And yeah, everyone should go check out The Flytrap. There’s just tons of great content on there, and so many great writers are involved. And we’ll have links to all of that in the show notes so that people can check it out, because it’s really good stuff. But it seems like from those hundred or so comments, some themes emerged that you were able to get into. And so one of the quotes that really interested me was, “Dense cities are the places that are safest for us,” meaning trans people. “But they’re very expensive because of the exclusionary policies, and we are one of the most financially precarious groups. That’s a setup that’ll naturally make you passionate about reform.” So maybe you could talk about that strain of comment that you got.

Katelyn Burns: Yeah, that was probably the most common sentiment that I heard from folks, and I experienced a little bit of this myself back in 2019, ’18-’19, I moved to Washington, DC, from Maine, which is a big culture shift. And I got rid of my car. I rode the Metro for years and years and years because that was just a viable way to save money. It’s not that I was short on money, it’s just that DC is one of the few places in this country where you can, for the most part, get away without having a car. That was until the pandemic, and it became relatively more unsafe to ride the subway.

Katelyn Burns: And DC is interesting, and I cite some statistics about DC in the piece, because DC was the first major US city to offer a trans-inclusive non-discrimination law. So it was one of the first cities that trans people looked at and said, “Oh, this is literally a legally safe place for me to exist. I can’t be discriminated against here. I’m moving here.” And as a result, if you look at all of the US states and territories in the United States, trans people make up a higher percentage of the population there than they do anywhere else in the US.

Katelyn Burns: Now that’s obviously skewed because DC is almost completely urban versus, like, the state of New York, which is mostly rural, even though most people live in a city. So you’re gonna have that natural, like, urban influence on the statistics, but nevertheless, trans people make up, like, 2.7 percent of the population in Washington, DC, which in the general population is estimated that we’re anywhere between 0.6 and 1.6 percent of the population. So there’s definitely a higher concentration of trans people there. And it’s also one of the places where rents have gone up the most in the country over the last 10 years. So I did borrow a little bit from my own personal experience in moving to a bigger city. I have since moved out of there and had to buy a car again, unfortunately. My friends make fun of me because I never drive my car.

Doug: [laughs] There’s another overlap with trans people and urban planning and culture that you mention in the piece, and that’s with gaming and a particular game, City Skylines, which I’ve played, I’m not super familiar with. I wonder if you could talk about the response you got from people who are enthusiasts of that game.

Katelyn Burns: So again, personal experience. I have a lot of hours in City Skylines. I wouldn’t say it’s a primary game for me, but it’s one I dabble in. But even beyond that, even if I had never played the game, as a journalist, I heard from enough of my sources that were like, “Oh, this is kind of my gateway into understanding transit on a systemic level or a planning level,” that it was worth including in the piece. And one of the reasons why I included it is because in a similar way to us seeking safety in big cities, traditionally trans people have sought safety in online or virtual spaces, and that includes gaming. It’s almost a meme that we’re all hopelessly addicted gamer girls—and I’m just talking about the trans women here. [laughs] So of course there’s going to be an overlap. If you’re interested in transit and you’re a gamer, you’re going to play City Skylines. Or maybe you grew up playing SimCity like I did. And I found that it’s the systems design portion of that game where you have to figure out okay, my people live here, they need to move between these places and we have this terrain, and what’s the best route and how often should we run a train here? And can we service this better with a subway or a train or a road? And having that, like, level of systems control becomes a source of endorphin release for a lot of people who are—I mean, I think this is true for anybody that plays this game that’s interested in transit, but I think that because of the way we’re socially treated, it becomes even more of an outlet for trans people.

Sarah: Yeah, I was gonna ask about that. The idea that as trans people, you’re probably hyper aware of some of the systemic things going on in society at large that the rest of us don’t see as clearly. And also this sense maybe of not being able to control these big systemic societal forces that often are intent on erasing you. Or do you think that having control over a sort of idealized system is something that’s particularly appealing if you’re a very marginalized person in this society where all the systems are kind of conspiring to eliminate or erase you?

Katelyn Burns: Yeah. And this kind of bleeds into my third point that I make in the piece, and that there’s a big crossover between autistic people and trans people. I want to preface that by saying not all autistic people are trans and not all trans people are autistic. And also that there are anti-trans forces and doctors who weaponize an autistic trans person’s autism against their gender identity as well.

Katelyn Burns: So having caveated all of that, I will say that I heard from quite a few autistic trans people who told me that it’s the systems management of all of it, not just City Skylines, but being interested in transit. You know, the predictable schedules, the predictable routes, the routine of it all brings a comfort, and appeals to that part of their mind as well. And I think there’s a little bit of that for people who aren’t autistic as well. Also, I did want to note that I’m saying “autistic trans people” because that’s how my autistic trans people want to be referred to as, rather than “trans people with autism.” And I know those terms go back and forth every year. So just as a side note.

Sarah: Yeah. No, I’m close to autistic people who really insist on “autistic people.” So that’s what I’m hearing, too.

Katelyn Burns: We’re on the same page then. So there’s something in the systemic nature of transit and urban planning that I think hits a certain note for a wide range of trans people. And I think that includes those who have a lot of fun playing City Skylines. It accounts for people who really appreciate having a regular transit routine, or having an efficient transit system in their city that services their neighborhood. I don’t know that that’s unique to trans people necessarily, but I think that we are all primed to have need of a transit system that works for us in some way more so than the general population. And that’s why it seems like every other trans person online is geeking out about trans.

Doug: Well, so I’m the straight, white cisgender male here, and what I hear you saying is that predictability equals safety. You know, if you know you’re showing up to the train station and there’s a 5:12 train and you leave your apartment at five o’clock to walk over there, you know you won’t have to be waiting around in a dark, lonely station for 40 minutes to an hour for the train to show up. So I would imagine anybody who’s interested in safety—and that’s not just trans people, that’s a lot of marginalized people need that predictability. Not just autistic people, obviously, but anybody who is concerned for their safety in public.

Katelyn Burns: Yeah. And I will say—and I didn’t include this in the piece because it would have been too long of an aside to fit in, but there is some risk of being a train user as a visibly trans person. Everybody’s aware that sometimes people get pushed in front of oncoming trains, and it’s happened multiple times to trans women in particular. And I remember when I lived in DC, I had my back glued to the wall until the doors were open and I was moving because I had that same fear. So it’s not that there is a hundred percent safety in using public transit for us, it’s just that the largeness of the city provides us, like, enough anonymity to live our lives mostly without being bothered.

Sarah: I thought a lot about this because I am a cis woman, I’m queer, and I do get misgendered fairly often, especially in the wintertime when I’m bundled up. But I find that for me sometimes that feels like an advantage that I’m not being perceived as femme necessarily. And so I was curious about that aspect of it, that first of all, what you mentioned, that public space can be dangerous for trans people, you know, on a train, off a train, anywhere. You know, obviously we all are painfully aware of that risk that trans people are dealing with everyday. But specifically for femme-presenting people, like, is that a special area of concern? And did people talk about that at all in your—you know, because I sometimes feel like, oh, I don’t fit certain femme stereotypes and that makes me feel like, rightly or wrongly, I can move about cities a little bit more safely than a more femme-presenting cis woman. And so I just don’t know how that—if anyone spoke to that kind of idea.

Katelyn Burns: I’m gonna say no, they didn’t, because it wasn’t really what I was asking for in the piece. I was asking for very broad thoughts on this in general. But I can offer a little bit of personal experience to this conversation. Back in DC, you know, I was subject to sexual harassment on the trains. I remember one time, it was probably midnight, and I was coming home from hanging out with friends. And I remember I was the only woman on the train car, and all of a sudden I heard this guy going, “Hey, lady. Look over here. Hey, lady. Look over here. Hey, pretty lady. Look over here.” And I did not take my eyes off of the phone screen that I had in front of me. And then I ran off the train. I can probably, and your listeners can probably guess what was happening in that situation. I can’t tell you exactly what was happening, although I had a good idea. And I say this just to make the point that a lot of people think that trans women are some other thing. You know, they’re not men, they’re not women, they’re this other thing. And what I say to that is we have all the same experiences that other femme-presenting people, you know, cis women or whoever have in these spaces. I’ve faced street harassment. I got followed off a train one time by somebody who wanted my phone number. And I am not—I am not the prettiest rose in the garden. [laughs] Although I was much more of a looker back then, I think.

Sarah: You’re a beautiful rose. I don’t want to hear you say that, Katelyn.

Doug: Exactly.

Katelyn Burns: But, you know, I make this point to say, like, we are still subject to the same types of public oppression as cis women, with the added twist of if certain people realize that we’re trans in that moment, things can turn very extremely violent extremely quickly. And I was lucky enough to avoid those incidents. And that’s why I mentioned, you know, the fear of getting pushed in front of a train. So yeah, there are risks for trans people using public transit, just like there are for cis women. But because we are more likely to be under- or unemployed than the rest of the population, I think we have no choice but to take public transit more often than the general population.

Sarah: Yeah. And I mean, it’s interesting to me that there is also, as you’ve talked about, this affection and sort of the fun side, the meme side, that there is this affection for this public space where trans people are just—you know, for the most part, just dealing with the same things that everybody else is dealing with. And in that way, it’s sort of—it’s just normal. But that’s not necessarily so easily won if you’re trans, you know, to have just a normal experience, right? It’s not always—not always on offer, right? Am I wrong in that? I don’t know.

Katelyn Burns: No, you’re correct on that. [laughs]

Doug: I wonder—again, speaking as someone who is not trans—if public transit becomes a space where you’re just trying to live your life, you’re just trying to get from point A to point B. You just want to get to work or get to school or get home. And I wonder if it isn’t a stand in for the trans experience in some other way of, like, just let me live my life. I’m not trying to bother anybody. I’m just trying to earn a living, or get an education or just see friends and be social. And in that way, that’s sort of the greater demand of trans people is just to live fully liberated lives like anybody else. And where else should you be able to do that but in public space and on transit?

Katelyn Burns: Right. One of my career’s greatest ironies is that I am quote-unquote, a “far leftist trans Marxist communist” in the eyes of some who might be in power right now. But I’ve actually spent my entire career making a libertarian argument for trans existence. [laughs] You know, I’m the person saying, “I think my government should leave me alone,” and it’s the libertarians saying, “No, no. The government should control your life.” And I’m like, “Wait a second, this feels backwards to me. How come I’m the leftist communist here?”

Doug: To be fair, I’ve had that shouted at me from car windows that I’m a leftist communist whatever. Yeah, exactly.

Katelyn Burns: How dare you go against Ford and General Motors!

Doug: We’ll take a quick break and we’ll be right back.

Sarah: It’s that time of year again, the April showers time, when the whole world is breathing a sigh of relief and opening up to spring. It’s one of my favorite seasons, full of growth and possibility. It also tends to be pretty wet, which is why this is the perfect time to get yourself a Rover rain cape, or one of the other cool rain gear options from Cleverhood. You can get 15 percent off everything in the Cleverhood store now through the end of March if you use the code APRILSHOWERS25 at Cleverhood.com/WarOnCars. That’s APRILSHOWERS25 at Cleverhood.com/WarOnCars. Have fun and stay dry.

Sarah: When we were talking about the gaming aspect and the planning aspect, and this idea that trans people, you know, are compelled sometimes to have a systemic view of things that maybe cis people just don’t have to be thinking about, you have an amazing quote from the Bluesky user known as Katie Tightpussy. And I really loved this quote. “I know what womanhood means to me, but given that gender is as equally personal as it is social, I am obliged to know what womanhood means to society. I think trans people tend to have a lot more conscious thought about this kind of grander societal thinking as a result of our experiences, which is also the exact way of thinking that you need to do with transit and urban planning.”

Katelyn Burns: Yeah. So we made this joke in the trans community that when you transition you also are conferred a master’s degree in gender studies because you argue with so many idiots online about your own gender that you become an expert in it, right? So we do the meme of the two Greek philosophers talking to each other about some high-minded concept, and that’s trans people talking to other trans people about gender. And then you have, like, the Jesus guy with the child trying to fit the shapes in the right holes in kindergarten. And it’s like trans people talking to cis people about gender.

Katelyn Burns: That’s all good natured fun. We don’t mean any harm by that. It’s just we have a different experience that often involves more depth, although not universally. I don’t say that to say that, like, we’re better at gender than anyone else. It’s just a meme that we use amongst ourselves. But I think she’s correct in that to even come around and acknowledge yourself as trans means looking at yourself in your own situation in a way that nobody else is.

Katelyn Burns: And especially nowadays with such a car-dominant society that we have, looking at your neighborhood and thinking, “Oh, like, we could actually do something differently here.” It works in a very similar analytical way, right? Like, I was—this morning was hanging out with two friends doing some coworking stuff, and I was like, “You know, the street that I live on should have like a—like a tram, I think, that would run from the outskirts of our town to downtown so that people wouldn’t have to drive.” And my friends are looking at me like, “But then our drive gets longer.” And I was like, “Well, too bad.”

Doug: [laughs]

Sarah: [laughs]

Katelyn Burns: It should be designed for people, not cars, right? Which is a refrain that you’re familiar with but, like, people who aren’t in the transit space wouldn’t necessarily get exposed to. But looking at that street and going, “You know, there should be something different here,” is not very different from me looking at my body in the mirror 10 years ago going, “You know, I think this should look slightly different to fit better and help me better.” Right?

Sarah: Yeah.

Katelyn Burns: There’s a shared analytical juice there, I think. And also, I just wanted to—as an aside, Katie Tightpussy is an amazing quote. And I cut, like, four or five other quotes that were just as amazing. Specifically, I want to shout out, she said, “City Skylines is egg behavior.” And I can explain that very briefly. Trans people who haven’t realized that they’re trans yet, we refer to as “eggs.” And then you have a moment where your egg cracks and the chick inside you starts working its way out. So she’s referring to, oh, you play City Skylines, you might be an egg.

Sarah: [laughs] I love that.

Katelyn Burns: I couldn’t fit that in the piece because then I’d have to explain what an egg is and the whole metaphor. But I thought that was great, and it had me laughing when she sent it to me. [laughs]

Doug: Okay, so there’s another Katie. We could go on and on and, you know, I feel like Katie’s gonna bring this episode to its biggest numbers yet because she’s just so prolific on Bluesky, the OG Bluesky member. And you talked about this is that she says there’s so many angles to urban planning, and that there are countless factors that need to be considered. And the quote that I really loved was, “It’s almost like a fractal with how much you have to understand depending on the scope and scale. All of that needs to be synthesized by someone who can see the vision.”

Doug: And again, mirroring my own experience as an advocate on just a very niche level as a bicycle advocate, let’s say, as my entry into this subject, you know, you start to see all the ways of, like, well, wait a minute. The reason we don’t have bike lanes in this town is because everything’s spread out and we don’t have dense infill housing. And issues about housing precarity, which I know affect trans people a lot more than the general population. And issues about policing, which affect other marginalized identities—people of color, Black people—differently than they affect me. You start to see all of the ways in which these issues become all of these overlapping circles. You know, I’m always—I’ve said it on the show before, Sarah, you’ve heard me say it, that I’m always reluctant when—I don’t know, I cringe a little bit when bicycle advocates compare themselves to some sort of marginalized identity. Because I can have a bad experience on my bike today and not bike tomorrow, right?

Katelyn Burns: Right.

Doug: But a trans person, a Black person, you know, any person who is not a cyclist, they can’t do that. They are that person tomorrow.

Katelyn Burns: Yeah.

Doug: But I do think if you’re doing advocacy right, it opens you up in a sensitive way to all of these other issues, and you can start to piece these things together. So long way of saying I love that quote of it just being this fractal that expands exponentially the more you start to scratch at it.

Katelyn Burns: Yeah. And I came to transit as—your listeners could probably tell—a train advocate. [laughs] I just think there should be trains everywhere. There’s a very prominent walking path that everybody uses in my town that used to be a railroad. I think it should go back to the railroad. But also, you know, having lived in DC and taken trains everywhere, the one time I do use my car for a key purpose is I go to get my kids in another state. And it’s not that far away. It’s about a three-hour drive, two and a half-hour drive. It’s twelve and a half hours by train.

Sarah: Hmm.

Doug: Of course.

Katelyn Burns: Like, I have to take a train from my small town to Boston. And I don’t know if you know anything about Boston’s train system.

Sarah: Oh, yeah.

Doug: Oh, yes.

Katelyn Burns: They have a great subway—well, relatively great for American standards—subway system. But their train tracks don’t connect between North and South Station. So I would have to take a train into South Station, get in a cab, go to North Station and catch another train. And then after I pick my kids up, we come back and we have to do the same thing again. And then we have to wait at the station to get the one train that goes out to my town. And it’s ridiculous. Why is it the way it is? I wouldn’t have to own a car if there was just a direct train route that went from my town to northern New England.

Sarah: Yeah.

Katelyn Burns: And that’s messed up, man. What the heck? [laughs]

Sarah: And there used to be.

Katelyn Burns: There used to be.

Doug: And that’s messed up, man. What the heck. New tagline for the podcast, I think.

Sarah: Yeah.

Doug: Both yours and ours. Yeah.

Sarah: But, like, that’s the thing. I think that one of the things that transit advocacy and basic urban planning awareness gets for you is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Katelyn Burns: Mm-hmm.

Sarah: And I think that for anyone who has honestly and with an open heart explored gender issues as well, like, once you see it, the diversity of gender expression and essence that there just is in the world, once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee that either. And that changes the way you see everything in a lot of ways. But that’s very threatening to a lot of people, obviously.

Katelyn Burns: It is.

Doug: And they seem to be—there’s a lot of, you know, just the reactionary movement. You’ve talked about it, I think, Katelyn, on the show about reactionary centrists.

Katelyn Burns: Yes.

Doug: You know, who really sort of say, “Well, I’m all in favor of this stuff, but we have to move slowly, but we can’t rock the boat too much.” And just this fear of change that they’re just battling something that can’t be undone and has always been this way.

Katelyn Burns: Yeah.

Doug: And it’s almost like the sort of we’re in a little blip right now where the status quo as it exists hasn’t existed actually for that long. And we’re sort of course correcting back to a more stable—granted, it doesn’t feel that way right now, but we’re trying to course correct back to a more stable way of looking at our cities, right? And hopefully a better way of looking at gender, too.

Katelyn Burns: Yeah, I think you’re correct in that regard. And I would say just for myself—I know I keep bringing it back to me, but I wrote the article, so too bad.

Sarah: [laughs]

Katelyn Burns: But there’s so much transit-wise that just doesn’t work in my life. There’s a busy stroad in my town that I can’t stand but can’t avoid. You know, all these things. And it all comes together in just annoyances that pile up throughout the day. I can’t help but be interested in this stuff. And it’s a little weird, too, because I live in a town, right, that is relatively rural in Massachusetts, but I come from the city, and people are like, “We can’t do that here.” I’m like, “Why not? [laughs] This town had a very extensive tram system until the 1950s, and it was ripped out and replaced by buses.”

Sarah: Yeah.

Katelyn Burns: And now the buses have to sit in the same traffic, and it doesn’t get there any faster, so no one rides them. And they’re like, “I didn’t even think of that.” [laughs]

Doug: Katelyn, I want to give an affirmative defense of you talking about yourself more often because, you know, I’ve heard you talk about and I’ve seen you post about trans issues have become, for very nefarious reasons, actually, like, the big issue of our politics right now—gender-affirming care for kids, et cetera. We all know the horrible ads that ran towards the end of the campaign and how much that affected stuff. And then you have Democrats like Gavin Newsom saying, like, “Whoa, we gotta slow our role on trans kids in sports,” and stuff like that.

Doug: I think we need more journalists speaking directly about their experience and why the stakes matter to them because too many journalists are talking about this like it’s sports and it doesn’t matter.

Katelyn Burns: Yeah.

Doug: And I would like to hear more journalists. Look, we have a show where we wear our bias in the title of the podcast, right? And we are not shy about saying what we think the world should look like moving forward. So I’m gonna stick up for you. Please keep talking about yourself. I like listening to you and reading you, so—and you talk a lot about how every time they’re talking about trans issues on CNN or in the New York Times, how many of those guest appearances or columns are actually written by or, you know, feature trans people? Very few. Almost none.

Katelyn Burns: Very few. I mean, there’s only one paid TV, like, news personality who is trans, and it’s Caitlyn Jenner on Fox News.

Sarah: Yeah.

Doug: Right.

Katelyn Burns: So I look at, you know, MSNBC, the network I write for, or CNN, who once approached me about possibly becoming an on-air talent, and I’m like, what the heck, man? Why is she the one that gets the bag and the rest of us don’t? And I will say in reply to what you just said, my ongoing joke with editors is you don’t call me when there’s good news.

Doug: Right.

Katelyn Burns: I always write about bad news when it comes to trans people. And it circles back to, once again, The Flytrap, which gives me a chance to write about whatever I want. This is not the first time I’ve written about transit for The Flytrap. I wrote a piece previously about where are all the women in urban planning? And secretly nobody knew, but it was to get all of the women in urban planning to follow me on Bluesky so I could follow them back. [laughs]

Doug: [laughs] It’s a great piece. We’ll link to it.

Sarah: Yeah.

Katelyn Burns: It’s funny because we got quite a few subscribers off of that because I think that there aren’t a lot of people necessarily talking about the women’s side of urban planning, you know, outside of Sarah and a few other people, and this podcast, certainly. I think there’s a real need for that. And we had an editorial meeting with some of our subscribers, like, a month or two ago and we said, “Well, what sort of pieces do you guys want us to write?” And they said, “Please, more urban planning.”

Doug: Wow!

Katelyn Burns: And that led directly to this trans-related piece. So if I am the gender and urban planning gal at The Flytrap now, I will actually die happy because that’s not necessarily bad news that I’m writing about all the time.

Sarah: [laughs]

Doug: That’s a great beat. I love it. Yeah.

Sarah: No, it’s a great beat, and there’s so many angles to get into. I have written about this stuff for a long time and think about it all the time. And I really am so excited to see more of it from The Flytrap, and more of everything from The Flytrap, because I’m so excited about what you’re doing over there. Because as I think you say somewhere on the website, it’s kind of a callback to the days of the feminist blog heyday when there was really a lot of really important thinking being put out into the world about feminism with a new perspective. And then that kind of got crushed by the way that the internet has evolved, sadly.

Katelyn Burns: Yeah, we don’t respond to news cycles at The Flytrap. So one of our goals is to be—it’s a horrible cliché, but a thought leader.

Sarah: Yeah.

Doug: Yeah.

Katelyn Burns: You know, if we come out with an interesting piece, we want to spark the conversation rather than having everybody just respond to whatever some, you know, a-hole conservative said on the day.

Sarah: Yeah. So what has been the response since you published, and what kind of feedback have you gotten?

Katelyn Burns: So the piece was really well received, and we got a couple of new subscribers off of it, which is, you know, for a new publication, that’s probably the most important thing for us. What people might not realize is we used it to launch a new merch line, actually. So we’re in the process of building out posters and stickers and wall art for—all of the art for our amazing pieces, produced by our amazing artist, Rommy Torrico. In fact, the one I’m most excited for is that women in urban planning art, because that thing went hard.

Doug: That graphic is incredible.

Sarah: Oh, yeah, no, that’s …

Doug: It’s pretty awesome.

Sarah: Yes. We’ll put it on our site and you all can see it.

Katelyn Burns: It’s so good. It was inspired by, like, the 1930s anti-car newspaper editorial cartoons that you see with, like, the Grim Reaper is the driver, you know, running people over. So that was kind of our inspiration for that, and it came out really well.

Doug: I’ll also give you a shameless plug for the “Trans on Trains” graphic, which is very, very good. The pink and blue train speeding through the center.

Katelyn Burns: Yeah. We actually took inspiration from, like, a transit authority emblem and we were like, “Oh, we could turn this into a sticker. This is a great idea.” [laughs]

Doug: It’s really good.

Sarah: Yeah. I just want to tell everybody, go over to The Flytrap, check it out. And check out Cancel Me, Daddy. And, you know, we’re in a point here in American history where I think we all are aware of what’s happening at the major media outlets. And even though there are a lot of good people in there, there’s a diminishing amount of reliable, real reporting happening. And that’s by design. And it’s outlets like yours and like ours, I guess, that are really trying to push back against that. So for those of you who do have a couple dollars you can throw to independent media, The Flytrap is a great place to put it because you are doing the good work.

Katelyn Burns: Yeah.

Doug: So Katelyn, to end on a hopefully light note, you said that you didn’t have room to include all of the quotes that you got from people. This is podcasting. We can afford a few more minutes.

Katelyn Burns: [laughs]

Doug: Can you share with us some of the stuff that you didn’t include, but you might have if you had unlimited space?

Katelyn Burns: Somebody quoted Dan Savage for explaining why so many queer people end up in cities. I’m not the biggest Dan Savage fan, to be clear, for a variety of reasons which we do not have time for, but the quote was, “Even if the town of 500 you grew up in in Iowa, happened to be, by some fluke, the most gay-tolerant, welcoming place in the world, if you want to have some choice about who you date, you can’t stay there. You’re going to have to migrate to the big city because we’re such a tiny percentage of the population, and if you want a viable dating scene and a few options besides the Catholic priest at the truck stop, you’ve gotta get to Chicago or you’ve got to get to Seattle.” I thought that was a great quote. My objection to it is it came from Dan Savage, who I do not want to quote in print, but I will tip my hat on that one. And this is from a transit professional who I don’t want to name necessarily because I didn’t ask permission to put them on blast like that.

Sarah: Yeah. No, that’s cool.

Katelyn Burns: But they went on to say, “We’re basically all really poor and housing vulnerable, so being able to live in cities cheaply is ideal. We get a lot of workplace discrimination, have a harder time with finding jobs, keeping jobs, et cetera. We also do not tend to have the fallback of moving back into our parents’ homes like most folks do. We just have a harder time finding safe roommates.” And that was all to go into why we are in cities, why we’re using transit, and just using transit systems regularly is more likely to make us critical of those systems and an advocate for change. And I thought that was really a succinct way to put it. I just could not work it into the piece, and I wish I could. [laughs]

Sarah: All right, well you’ve worked it in here, and I think it’s a great thing.

Doug: Absolutely.

Sarah: And I know our listeners are gonna be excited to see more about this from you, and to go and find out more about what it is that you do. Thank you so much, Katelyn, for coming on The War on Cars.

Doug: And please come back anytime.

Katelyn Burns: Yeah, thank you. Have me on anytime. Literally.

Sarah: That’s it for this episode of The War on Cars. Thanks again to Katelyn Burns for joining us. We’ll put links to The Flytrap, along with how to find her on social media in the show notes.

Doug: And if you would like to join us and support the fight against car dependence, go to Patreon.com/TheWaronCarsPod. You can sign up today for exclusive access to bonus content, ad-free versions of regular episodes like this one, presale tickets for live events, free stickers and more. And Sarah—most likely Sarah will send you a handwritten thank-you note.

Sarah: Yes. I love doing that. A big thanks to everyone who supports us on Patreon, including our top contributors: Charley Gee of Human Powered Law in Portland, Oregon, Mark Hedlund and Virginia Baker.

Doug: We also want to thank the Helen and William Mazer Foundation for their generous support.

Sarah: Thanks also to Cleverhood. Listeners of The War on Cars can save 15 percent on everything in the Cleverhood store now through the end of April by going to Cleverhood.com/waroncars, and entering code APRILSHOWERS25 at checkout.

Doug: And Sarah, I don’t know if you know, we have a book coming out. We talked about it at the top of the show, but I’m just reminding you because it’s so cool to remind people that we have a book coming out.

Sarah: It is. And you can find out all about it LifeAfterCars.com.

Doug: This episode was edited by Ali Lemer.

Sarah: It was recorded at the Brooklyn Podcasting Studio by Walter Nordquist.

Doug: And at the Mystery Street Recording Company in Chicago by Mickey Cushing.

Sarah: Our theme music is by Nathaniel Goodyear. Transcripts are by Russell Gragg. I’m Sarah Goodyear.

Doug: I’m Doug Gordon. And this is The War on Cars.