Large Language Models in Transportation: A Comprehensive Bibliometric Analysis of Emerging Trends, Challenges, and Future Research
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper presents a comprehensive bibliometric analysis of Large Language Models (LLMs) in transportation, exploring emerging trends, challenges and future research. Understanding their evolution and impact in transportation research is essential. The study used Scopus as the primary data source, applying Bibliometrix, VOSviewer, and Python for performance analysis and science mapping. This study analyzes 161 peer-reviewed articles and reveals a 25.74% annual growth in scholarly output.IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation SystemsandIEEE Transactions on Intelligent Vehiclesemerge as the most influential journals by publication volume and impact on LLM research. The findings highlight global disparities in research contributions, with China and the United States dominating by publication volume, followed by Germany and Canada, while developing regions exhibit lower scientific productivity. In addition, the study provides qualitative insights by reviewing recent LLM applications in transportation, examining their key contributions, methodological approaches, inherent limitations, and domain-specific challenges. Key research themes focus on autonomous mobility, traffic optimization, and sustainable transportation networks. Despite significant progress, several challenges remain, including decision-making uncertainties, computational scalability, and high energy consumption. Overcoming these challenges requires greater transparency through causal learning, enhanced reasoning via hybrid AI models, and inclusive frameworks that address algorithmic bias and ensure equitable adoption.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.020 | 0.100 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.063 | 0.124 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.013 | 0.018 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".