question about commute editing (ilive reader - bat files)

[Milliano 0]

I have the NAM with the Radical Custom Special transit edit. I want to increase the speed of commuting, so my sims will be more likely to get jobs from further out. With ilive reader, I've tried editing the speeds of all the commute methods in the simcity_1.dat file. I didn't notice any change in the game, and certainly not to 'commute time'.

So then I tried editing the values of the radical custom special dat file in my plugins folder for NAM. Basically I made each commute mode 10x faster than it was already set at. But in the game, it acts exactly the same as before. No change of commute time.

So my question is, is it even possible to edit the simulator->traffic/commute values? And if so, which dat file should I be editing?

Somebody on this forum said that with that NAM option, sims will even commute all the way across a region. I don't find this to be true. Even just 1-2 cities away, with no traffic overload, on freeway/car/bus/train/subway, the commutes are still labelled as "long" and average commute IIRC hovers around 20-50 minutes.

Edit: In the radical custom special dat file (in my plugins\nam folder) I changed the option for commute preference for each wealth $. Now both R$$/R$$$ have the same preference as R$. The result: 100% public transit use! CPU going crazy apparently trying to do the pathfinding. But still, the edits on commute speed for each transit type haven't done a thing.

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum. I've lurked here long but haven't posted before.

Thanks for any help!

Edit: In my region of 20k-200k populated cities, I just tried going without public transit. And it made a huge difference. Commute times dropped from 20-50min to 1-15 minutes. Another thing is the game runs WAY faster (far less time bogged down, hardly moving a day). Pathfinding with public transit seems to take up a HUGE amount of CPU time. I changed the traffic-air pollution variable to zero and now the traffic gives off no air pollution (but still traffic noise) to counteract no public transit. Because of the huge CPU need for public transit and the increased commute time, I  think I'm going to 'cheat' and go without it. For me seems better to make it all commute by car, increasing road capacities and speeds, and eliminating car air pollution. With larger (+100K) populated regions anyway, it seems more reasonable to do this. I still don't know why public transit commutes take so long though. But if a city has over 100K, with public transit, things get so bogged down that it's nearly unplayable on my computer.

Moving to transporation modding forum  NOB