Increasing Capacity

A growing population and continuing rise in economic activity is producing a steady increase in U.S. freight requirement. Versant helps GE Transportation enable Norfolk Southern to maximize railroad capacity, velocity and efficiency.

Challenge

The Federal Railroad Administration is expecting railroad freight traffic to double by 2020. GE Transportation Systems, the global technology leader and supplier to the railroad industry, is addressing the problem with RailEdge® Movement Planner, an object-oriented software system incorporating an object database by Versant.

Solution

Versant provides significantly higher performance with RailEdge's complex object models than a relational database. Objects with moderate complexity perform three-times faster, while objects with high levels of complexity, many-to-many relationships, perform over thirty-times faster.

Results

Taking over scheduling and routing from human operators, RailEdge improves fuel efficiency and achieves a two-to-four miles-per-hour increase in average train velocity. A one-mile-per-hour improvement saves $200 million annually in capital and expense.