To compound the troubles, the new freeways that were built diverted traffic away from the small towns.
The big things just weren't big enough to lure hungry travellers from the generic service stations and drive-through takeaway joints that dot the freeways today.
It was as if he sailed out to find something deeper than freeways and fast food.
Earlier in the evening groups lobbed bricks and bottles at police, and briefly shut down two freeways.
A shame, as the city and its surroundings have continued to undergone massive changes, and to be sclerotic and scintillating at the same time: congested freeways, massive real estate price inflation, absurd wealth on one side of the city and deprivation on the other, racial conflict and exhilarating cultural hybridity.
Not only does it run along landmarks such as the Getty Centre, but it is also a mountain pass that connects two other freeways, the 10 and the 101, and, more generally, western and southern Los Angeles with California's north, from the San Fernando Valley to the central coast or Central Valley beyond.Normally, on such a weekend, half a million cars might travel on this highway.
The second is that, thanks to its ports and freeways, LA enjoys good communications with both the Pacific rim and Latin America, not to mention the rest of the United States.The third is that many of these firms have developed a distinctive style with huge international appeal.
Peak season means queues in the harbour, delays at the dock, congestion on the freeways, and delayed trains carrying containers inland.
Without aqueducts, tunnels, pipelines and pumping stations to carry the water south, there would be no Central Valley to put fresh food on the tables of America; no urban sprawl with its freeways and factories, office parks, shopping malls and sub-divisions that characterise southern California and have made it one of the ten economic powerhouses of the world.
In outward appearance Caracas is the most "Americanised" of Latin American capitals, its freeways clogged with big Fords and Chevrolets and girded by billboards for Coca-Cola.
More touching were the tributes from ordinary Americans: the flags festooned over freeways and the ten-hour queue to see his body as it lay in the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California.The national outpouring of emotion was an index of Mr Reagan's huge importance.
