Publications and Presentations

I have a number of publications and presentations. DOI links link to publisher sites; if open access versions are available, links to those are included as well. If you have any trouble accessing any of these publications, or just want to chat, please feel free to get in touch.

• Conway, Matthew Wigginton and Anson F. Stewart. 2019. “Getting Charlie off the MTA: A Multiobjective Optimization Method to Account for Cost Constraints in Public Transit Accessibility Metrics.” International Journal of Geographic Information Science 33 (9): 1759–1787. doi:10.1080/13658816.2019.1605075. (Also available as an open-access postprint).
  We introduce a new method to include fare constraints in accessibility metrics, accounting for complex fare structures and transfer incentives. We demonstrate the results on a case study of the accessibility benefits of lowered fares on the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority commuter rail in greater Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Also available in blog post form.
• Salon, Deborah, Matthew Wigginton Conway, Kailai Wang, and Nathaniel Roth. 2019. “Heterogeneity in the Relationship Between Biking and the Built Environment.” Journal of Transport and Land Use 12: 99–126. doi:10.5198/jtlu.2019.1350. (Open access).
  We evaluated how the built environment correlates of bicycling vary between different groups using data from California. Children and adults exhibit different bicycling behavior in similar built environments, suggesting that children are more risk-averse and distance-averse than adults.
• Conway, Matthew Wigginton, Deborah Salon, and David A King. 2018. “Trends in Taxi Use and the Advent of Ridehailing, 1995–2017: Evidence From the US National Household Travel Survey.” Urban Science 2 (3): 79. doi:10.3390/urbansci2030079. (Open access).
  We analyze the changes in for-hire vehicle use in the United States using new data from the 2017 National Household Travel Survey.
• Conway, Matthew Wigginton, Andrew Byrd, and Michael van Eggermond. 2018. “Accounting for Uncertainty and Variation in Accessibility Metrics for Public Transport Sketch Planning.” Journal of Transport and Land Use 11 (1): 541–58. doi:10.5198/jtlu.2018.1074. (Open access).
  This article presents methods we developed for quantifying the variation in public transport travel time, and the uncertainty in accessibility metrics developed during public transport sketch planning.
• Conway, Matthew Wigginton, Andrew Byrd, and Marco van der Linden. 2017. “Evidence-Based Transit and Land Use Sketch Planning Using Interactive Accessibility Methods on Combined Schedule and Headway-Based Networks.” Transportation Research Record 2653 (January): 45–53. doi:10.3141/2653–06. (Also available as an open-access postprint).
  This paper presents methods we developed at Conveyal to rapidly compute rigorous accessibility metrics for public transit systems, taking into account variation due to schedules, departure times, and incompletely-specified scenarios.
• Green, Ben, Alejandra Caro, Matthew Conway, Robert Manduca, Tom Plagge, and Abby Miller. 2015. “Mining Administrative Data to Spur Urban Revitalization.” The 21st ACM SIGKDD International Conference. New York, New York, USA: ACM. doi:10.1145/2783258.2788568.
  My team at the Data Science for Social Good program at the University of Chicago wrote this paper summarizing our work on identifying abandoned or distressed housing from administrative data without the need for costly surveys. We also explored the impact of housing abandonment on surrounding home values.
• Conway, Matthew Wigginton. 2014. “Predicting the Popularity of Bicycle Sharing Stations: An Accessibility-Based Approach Using Linear Regression and Random Forests.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the California Geographical Society, Los Angeles, California, May 2–4.
  Bikesharing systems have been growing quickly of late. They consist of stations distributed throughout a city where one can check out a bike for short trips. Some stations are more popular than others. This project develops statistical models to predict station popularity based on the accessibility of stations to jobs and housing. Linear regression and random forest regression are employed. The models are then transferred to other systems to evaluate their efficacy as planning tools for new systems. Models do not predict as well as might have been hoped, nor is there any one model that performs uniformly well in all cities. Spatial autocorrelation is present both in the popularities and the residuals from most of the models, indicating that spatial effects (such as accessibility) have not been fully explained.
• Conway, Matthew Wigginton. 2013. “Cyberspace Classrooms and E-Professors: One Laptop Learner Considers the Merits and Downfalls of Online Classes.” Daily Nexus, March 5.
  Some of the university class can be productively moved online, while some cannot. Lectures work very well online, but other parts of the university experience do not. Unstructured time between students and professors is critical to creating a community of scholars, but that this can easily be lost in the online environment.
  Copyright © 2013 by the Daily Nexus. Used with permission.
• Conway, Matthew Wigginton. 2012. “Measuring Urban Mobility and Accessibility Using OpenTripPlanner Analyst.” Poster presented at the annual meeting of the California Geographical Society, Davis, California, April 27–29.
  Measures of urban mobility and accessibility are useful in many situations, from real estate to urban planning. Some methods of measuring and visualizing mobility and accessibility include making travel-time isochrones, measuring travel time effects of network changes, measuring accessibility using opportunity data, and creating time-space prisms. Transit, walking and cycling are more important to mobility than driving in many urban areas. This poster examines how the open-source OpenTripPlanner Analyst software can be used in conjunction with open transit agency and street network data to create visualizations of multimodal mobility, accessibility and changes in travel time.
• Conway, Matthew Wigginton. 2009. “Rain Check.” Film presented at the Greenlight Earth Day Film Festival, Palo Alto, CA.
  This film is about stormwater management and retention, covering topics such as rain barrels and permeable pavement. It was a finalist at the 2009 Greenlight Earth Day Film Festival.
• Conway, Matthew Wigginton. 2007. “Another Fine Mess.” Film presented at the Greenlight Earth Day Film Festival, Palo Alto, CA.
  This film is about construction and demolition waste management. It won second place in the 2007 Greenlight Earth Day Film Festival.