NAM: Which settings are most realistic?

[grudy 0]

I've used the NAM for quite some time now, ever since the first one came out.  Anyway, since then, I've always assumed that using the "radical custom special" setting would be most realistic.  However, now looking at a city with 160k people, the size of the streets necessary just look too small (no avenues, only a few major roads and some rail/bus traffic).

That being said, we all know that sc4 is inaccurate in so many respects that it is hard to really make sense of any of the numbers in the game (I mean, even w/ 10x capacity, roads hit medium congestion at about 3000 cars/day, which in my opinion should occur more around 20,000 cars/day).  Then again, sc4 doesn't take into account anything besides people commuting to and from work, and not all of the other multitudes of trips that occur in a real city.  I personally like to make region-sized cities, but we all know that this is a bit of a myth too, since the way pathfinding works is sketchy at best.  It's even possible to say that when the game was originally designed, there were certain balances in the commuting numbers based on some obscure math, but that would allow for a reasonably accurate-looking city, even if the numbers were weird (and thus tweaking the numbers, while improving some aspects, could throw other aspects out of kilter).

What are your opinions of the best settings to use?  It's a pretty hard call, but I'm curious.

[SC4BOY 21]

This is still a matter of some debate among those who care... The radical is blatantly silly in terms of realism.. If you wish to see a discussion of WHY its still up for debate you may want to take a look at MOTT's COMMUTE ENGINE THREAD

[Death54 3]

I just use the perfect pathfinding option. I used to use radical, but there's one major downfall with it. Even though the commuter speed and capacity is far over the normal, you have no clue if a street is jammed pack, which sometimes makes commute times LONG in the most dense areas of your city, even if the sims are just WALKING a few blocks.

[A Nonny Moose 8,262]

I have always used perfect pathfinding.  Radical stuff is not for me.  I am never in that much rush.