[sgxin]

Not a bad idea but Spore keep building new housing estates and new roads which will come with new bus stops. So how do you propose to update the new bus stop info into each card since those are not stored on server?

For each day the new bus stop is in service and it is not loaded into existing cards the LTA aka govt is losing monies or earn big monies as just charge maximum distance fare? Then we complain again?

Your idea work but need to handle how to update new bus stop into the millions of existing cards in a good way without using server approach.

Don't think a full recalcuation for the entire Spore takes more than an hour on a fast server.
This can be done off-line and loaded into the fare terminals/gantries (not cards) whenever they are booted up (for every bus trip or each day for train stations).