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This may be California's worst intersection. There are no plans to fix it.

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ZLoth:
From SF Gate:

This may be California's worst intersection. There are no plans to fix it.
--- Quote ---Hope goes to die at the quasi-intersection of Los Angeles’ Fairfax Avenue, Olympic Boulevard and San Vicente Boulevard, just a couple blocks south of the famous La Brea Tar Pits. The soul-sucking nature of the Fairfax/Olympic/San Vicente hellhole – termed the “asterisk”  by neighborhood organizations and “the butthole”  by my girlfriend – is notorious in the larger Los Angeles community. Last year, in a social media post Mindy Kaling deemed “boring,”  the actor asked her followers what the worst intersection in LA was. Kaling volunteered her pick: Fairfax/Olympic/San Vicente.

The trouble with this intersection is that it isn’t really an intersection. Unlike a typical six-way intersection, where coordinated signals allow drivers on each road to take their turn in an orderly fashion, San Vicente actually first crosses Fairfax and then crosses Olympic a few hundred feet later, meaning that drivers – if they’re lucky – must wait for not just one but two endless light cycles. The limited space to queue between these two crossings creates significant backups. During rush hour, a car may have to sit through an entire green light cycle without moving because there is no space to go. It is urban planning chaos.
--- End quote ---
FULL ARTICLE HERE

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Max Rockatansky:
Trouble fixing anything on Olympic is that it isn’t CA 26 (ii) anymore.  Without state money that corridor isn’t getting a big project.  The corridor of Olympic was interesting given it more or less started out with a similar building push to the likes of the Ramona Expressway.  The project became increasingly inadequate as it dragged on and was replaced by the Santa Monica Freeway.

The Ghostbuster:
What would any of you suggest to fix this intersection? It may be unfixable without significant property relocation.

1:
Would timing the lights so that each road gets greens for both cross streets simultaneously help?

webny99:
There's a somewhat similar configuration in Brighton, NY, at the intersection of Monroe Ave, Elmwood Ave, and Winton Rd. It's known locally as "Twelve Corners". Satellite view here. I'm not aware of any significant or recurring congestion problems at this junction. However, there are a few prohibited turn movements. (WB Monroe: no left turn on Winton. SB Winton: no left turn on Elmwood. EB Elmwood: no left turn on Monroe)

The main difference in the LA example is the extreme angle at which San Vicente crosses Olympic. Ideally, the mid-intersection markings would be removed, but that might be impractical because of the sheer size of the intersection.

Even so, I don't see why it creates such a bottleneck unless there's something else downstream that backs traffic up into the intersection. Is there a specific turn movement that causes issues?

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