One Ticket, Whole NYC: Longest Subway Route Without Repeating a Station

Remember as a kid trying to ride the bus to the end just to see where it goes? Developer John went further and crafted an optimal route that hits the maximum number of NYC subway stations without ever visiting the same one twice.

What's the result?

• The route covers over 200 stations.
• It takes about 14 hours to complete.
• It uses all 24 subway lines.

The SingleRide project isn't just a fun challenge; it's a brilliant showcase of graph algorithms in action. Essentially, it's a Hamiltonian path problem in a transportation network — a classic NP-complete problem that the author solved heuristically.

For IT professionals, this is a reminder of how algorithms can optimize routes not just for subways, but for delivery, logistics, or even planning test coverage in your code.

METABYTE studio comment: If you thought graphs were only useful for coding interviews, here's a real-world example of their practical value. Want to optimize your business processes with algorithms? We know how to do it.