The Periodic Table of UK Fares, Ticketing & Retail

The whole ecosystem — products, channels, technology, the authorities, the operators and the people who own them — arranged, with apologies to Mendeleev, as a periodic table.

Position means something. Fare products sit where the reactive alkali metals go; closed-loop schemes take the noble gases; the suppliers and the payments world drop into the lanthanide and actinide rows beneath. Tap any element for the definition — and the opinion.