Have a Good Travel Time in Routing: Bibliometric Analysis, Literature Review, and Future Directions

Abstract

Travel time serves as a critical factor in routing problems, affecting routing decisions, congestion avoidance, and environmental sustainability. In this study, a thorough bibliometric and network analysis is presented based on 1752 documents collected from Web of Science published in the past three decades. CiteSpace is adopted to generate research clusters for topological analysis that graphically illustrate the publications' evolution over time and identify the current state and the emerging trends of routing problems with travel time focus. The collaboration network explores the cooperation patterns between countries and institutions. Attention toward the time‐dependency, uncertainty, dynamic characteristics of travel time, and the influence of travel speed on emissions, is uncovered through document co‐citation analysis. Furthermore, a comprehensive review of the literature has been conducted from an information quality and evolution perspective. Realistic scenarios such as fuel consumption and traffic conditions are eliciting more attention. Significant emphasis is increasingly placed on the time dependency, reliability, uncertainty, and dynamics of travel time. This study systematically reviews and analyzes relevant research on routing problems with travel time focus, identifying key emerging trends and knowledge gaps, and offering valuable insights for future research.