I'm just checking out the mod and fixing some scripts, nothing big really.
Some more advise regarding performance:
The loading times of the mod being so long are probably caused by the (playable) vehicles. Since each vehicle ID (in the Units folder) gets initialized upon loading, the game is going through all the corresponding prototype and model files of them. Now, the problem is that your vehicle folder still contains huge files, even after converting the files to .png. For example, the '03 FDNY' folder alone is already 1,4 gb. Compared to a size of 3 mb (!) for the similar folder (02 LA Fire Department) in the LA Mod it's incredibly huge. My advise regarding this issue: downsize the textures. A 2048x2048 sized texture just isn't really useful in EM4. I know the big textures are more detailed and pretty, but ingame you cannot even zoom in that close to read the brand of each screw. You mostly play the game from a birds eye view anyway. I'd convert a texture of that size to 1024x1024 pixels, which will make it 4 times as small. Doing that for the 100's of textures will probably create another performance boost.
The loading times of the map (when loading freeplay) have a similar cause, but instead of vehicles, objects (the buildings) are causing the long loading times. Same advise applies to this: downsize textures and make people happy.
I even bet you can make the entire mod as small as 1 GB (or even less) without much quality difference.
Hooper