A pattern playing out in city halls — and at Fullerton’s own train station

Organizations in crisis rarely announce themselves as such. More often, they produce charts, reports, and performance metrics that tell a reassuring story — one that, on closer inspection, was shaped by the same decisions it purports to evaluate. This is one of the quieter dangers of institutional mismanagement: it doesn’t just damage an organization, it can generate the evidence that justifies its own continuation.

The pattern is visible at the highest levels of government and corporate life. It is also visible, in miniature, at the Fullerton train station, where a dispute over bicycle lockers is offering a textbook example of how low performance, manufactured by neglect, gets cited as the reason to eliminate the very thing being neglected.

When managers make poor decisions, they typically face two options: change course or defend the course they’re on. Defense, in institutional settings, almost always involves data. The problem is that those same managers often control what data gets collected, how it gets measured, and how it gets reported.

This creates a feedback loop. A leader who has misallocated resources will tend to measure success in ways that don’t reveal the misallocation. A department head who has pursued the wrong strategy will frame performance indicators around the metrics where progress is easiest to show. Over time, the organization’s entire information infrastructure bends toward confirming decisions already made.

It isn’t always deliberate fraud. More often, it’s a quieter process — choosing which questions to ask, which baselines to set, which time windows to measure, and which comparisons to draw. Each choice, on its own, seems defensible. Together, they produce a portrait of competence drawn in invisible ink.

The Fullerton Locker Problem

Consider the bicycle lockers at the Fullerton Metrolink station. The city is weighing its removal, and the justification being offered is low usage. On its face, that sounds like a reasonable, data-driven rationale. Look closer, and it starts to resemble something else entirely.

Renting a locker requires finding out who is responsible for them, signing a contract, and putting down an $80 deposit — a process so cumbersome that many cyclists find it easier to ride a beater bike they’re not worried about losing, lock it up outside, or simply bring their bicycle onto the train and secure it at their destination. The lockers themselves are poorly maintained and not easily visible from the station. And the city does not provide accessible information about whom to contact to rent one.

In other words, the city created conditions almost perfectly designed to suppress locker usage — and is now citing suppressed locker usage as evidence that lockers aren’t needed.

This is the feedback loop in its purest form. As one advocate familiar with the situation put it, it’s a case of “lies, damn lies, and statistics.” The low uptake isn’t a verdict on whether cyclists want secure storage. It’s a verdict on whether the city made secure storage findable, functional, and worth the trouble.

Council Member Dr. Ahmad Zahra has reportedly spoken with the City Manager to halt the locker removal, though whether that decision is final remains unclear. The outcome may hinge on whether advocates show up to make the case before it’s settled.

Measuring the Wrong Things and Cherry-Picking the Timeline

The locker situation reflects a broader pattern in how Fullerton handles active transportation. The city has pointed to low usage of bike lanes and roundabouts as evidence that cyclists don’t want or need them. But residents and cycling advocates counter that the infrastructure itself is the problem — that Fullerton’s bike lanes and roundabouts are so poorly designed that low ridership reflects the quality of the facilities, not the absence of demand.

This is the classic mismanagement data trap: measuring outputs rather than outcomes, and then using those outputs to validate the decisions that produced them. A bike lane that dumps riders into traffic, or a locker program that requires an $80 deposit and a phone number no one can easily find, will generate discouraging numbers. Those numbers will then be used to argue against investing in better infrastructure or better programs. The failure becomes self-reinforcing, and the data becomes its alibi.

One of the most common tools in this playbook is selective periodization — choosing a start date for measurement that makes current numbers look favorable by comparison. Applied to civic infrastructure, this often means measuring usage after a program has already been allowed to deteriorate, rather than tracking the arc from functional to neglected. The result is a snapshot that looks like a verdict but is actually a consequence.

In Fullerton’s case, the relevant question isn’t whether the lockers are being used at high rates right now. It’s whether they would be used if they were maintained, visible, and easy to rent. That question is harder to answer with existing data, which may be precisely why it isn’t being asked.

Organizations under poor leadership often commission external reviews that appear to provide independent accountability but are structured to confirm decisions already made. The questions given to reviewers shape the findings, and the questions come from the people who need favorable findings. The result carries the authority of objectivity while functioning as a mirror.

Cities do this too — with traffic studies, usage audits, and infrastructure assessments that are framed around the conclusion leadership has already reached. Whether that’s what’s happening with Fullerton’s active transportation data is a question advocates would do well to press publicly.

The antidote to data shaped by mismanagement is not more data — it’s differently sourced data, with different incentive structures attached to it. Independent audits are conducted by parties with no relationship to the decisions being evaluated. Performance metrics set before interventions begin, not after. Usage data is examined in the context of program accessibility, not in isolation.

It also requires people willing to show up and say so out loud.

What Cyclists Can Do Now

The bike locker situation — and the broader question of how Fullerton funds and designs active transportation infrastructure — is not settled. Advocates have a real window to influence the outcome, but it requires showing up at the right moments.

The City Council meeting on July 21 is a critical date. Supporters of the bike lockers at the train station should attend and speak during public comment. But the budget process matters just as much, if not more. The Community Budget session and City Council budget meetings are where funding decisions actually take shape — and where advocates can explicitly ask that bike lockers be included in the budget, both during agenda items and during the budget approval process itself.

Anyone with connections to Fullerton’s cycling community should spread the word. The data the city is using to justify removing these lockers was, in large part, produced by the city’s own failure to support them. The only way to interrupt that cycle is to make the case, in person, before the decision becomes permanent.

Please contact all of the city council representatives at the email and phone numbers below:

• District 1: Fred Jung Council Chair (714) 738-6311 fred.jung@cityoffullerton.com

• District 2: Nicholas Dunlap Council Vice Chair (714) 738-6311 nicholas.dunlap@cityoffullerton.com

• District 3: Dr. Shana Charles (714) 738-6311 shana.charles@cityoffullerton.com

• District 4: Jamie Valencia (714) 738-6311   jamie.valencia@cityoffullerton.com

• District 5: Dr. Ahmad Zahra (714) 738-6311 ahmadz@cityoffullerton.com

Community Meeting About the Budget

Budget Community Meeting #1
Tuesday, July 7, 2026, at 5:30 pm in the main conference center of the Fullerton Public Library at 353 West Commonwealth Avenue, Fullerton, CA 92832

Budget Community Meeting #2
Thursday, July 9, 2026, at 5:30 pm at the Hunt Branch Library at 201 South Basque Avenue, Fullerton, CA 92833

Learn more about Fullerton’s finances here.

Fullerton Bicycle Forum: How you can make Fullerton safer for bicyclists