Abstract Transportation is the leading and basic industry in the national economy. It is an indispensable and irreplaceable part of social production and living organization system. The macro analysis of the literature in the field of transportation can provide a new perspective for researchers and managers. This paper uses vosviewer software, based on the keyword co-occurrence relationship of literature, to cluster the conference documents published by the Transportation Research Board of the United States from 2015 to 2019, and analyze in detail eight key areas, including aviation, highway, marine transportation, motor carriers, pedestrians and bicyclists, pipelines, public transportation and railroads. The above analysis reveals the research status of the whole and 8 key sub fields in the field of transportation, so as to provide support for science and technology planning and decision-making in the field of transportation.