It’s no surprise that Los Angeles is a car-centric city. With the boom of the automobile just over half a century ago, the city was shaped to prioritize the comfort of motorized, wheeled transportation, with miles and miles of concrete stretching beyond the horizon. Although recent efforts to promote public transit through high speed trains and extended lines have paid off, the truth is the city still relies heavily on cars. And one clear example of this is this iconic spot in Boyle Heights.
The history behind the East L.A. Interchange
The Eugene A. Obregon Memorial Interchange, better known as the East Los Angeles Interchange, is a complex where four numbered routes come together: Interstate 5 (I-5), I-10, U.S. Route 101 (US 101), and State Route 60.
When it was planned and later on built, the East Los Angeles Interchange was hailed as a civil engineering marvel, with its construction spanning 135 acres starting in 1961. The interchange features thirty-two bridges and twenty retaining walls, with 1,500,000 cubic yards of earth excavated. The project involved laying 23,545 feet of concrete pipe, using 4,200,000 cubic yards of concrete, and 13,200,000 pounds of reinforcing and structural steel.
Why It’s known as “Malfunction Junction”?
But the numbers that speak to its impressive size are also staggering when we talk about the traffic that flows through it. According to the most recent data from 2015 published by KCRW, this interchange is the busiest in the world, with around 2.4 million cars passing through it every day.
However, that fact isn’t the only striking detail that makes this interchange famous. The site is popularly known as “Malfunction Junction” because of the complexity of its many overlapping routes (a nickname given by KNX traffic reporter Bill Keene). The interchange has also been called “The Beast,” the “L.A. Interchange,” and the “East Delay” Interchange, names attributed to KNX’s Jim Thornton, as well as the “Nickel/Dime” during traffic reports.
This stretch of highway is also infamous because its construction displaced 20,000 families back in the day. This corner of L.A. was home to Mexican, Japanese, Jewish, Italian, and Black communities, who had to move to other parts of the city to make way for this concrete giant that now cuts through the neighborhood.