Some developer introduced the helper edge to help with the lineage path-finding, where a upstream path can semantically contain edges in both directions and its hard to express that in naive Neo4j CYPHER uni-directional queries. Plus he added time-based filtering to those helper edges.
Unfortunately, the helper edges are unintentionally also added to other types of relations beyond the lineage relations, and they are not useful at all.
Since Neo4j now supports more sophisticated path-finding with APOC extension syntax, it is now possible to remove the helper edges and opt for a better solution. But it requires refactoring.