CVRP and removing edges from a graph
I don't know anything about routing, so take this with a grain of salt.
What you have is a metric graph, in that your graph satisfies the triangle inequality.  If you start removing edges, then  heuristic algorithms might have less to work with, which isn't obviously better.
Take for example a look at these questions:

Bottleneck TSP with MST
For a set of points P, connected by weighted edges (distances) I need a path through all points while minimizing the travel on any edge longer than X


Taking removing edges to the extreme is actually how Christofides algorithm works for approximating Travelling Salesman; Namely by finding a Minimum Spanning Tree and deleting all the remaining edges.