Sarah Gorajek walked out of her 9:10 a.m. class Thursday to find that her unregistered bicycle wasn’t where she’d parked it.
“Oh, this is great,” Gorajek said she thought to herself.
Stolen? No.
Impounded? Yes.
Gorajek isn’t alone. MSU Parking Services has impounded more than 1,250 bicycles since mid-May.
Without wheels, the general management senior was forced to return home by foot to retrieve her car so she could travel across campus to the MSUDepartment of Police and Public Safety Building and repossess her bicycle.
Gorajek spent nearly five hours of her afternoon in line and on the telephone trying to cut through red tape and regain what was once hers.
“They said it would take a day to do the paperwork to get my bike back, but I needed it right away,” she said.
The whole experience ended up costing Gorajek almost $40 - $2 to register her bicycle, an $8 impoundment fee and $25 for a new lock to replace the one cut off by Parking Services, as well as meter money to park her car.
But Gorajek and those who find themselves in a similar situation shouldn’t be surprised said Mike Rice, deputy chief for parking and safety.
“Unfortunately, it’s an annual event,” he said.
Rice said the parking department placed notices in campus newsletters and posted flyers around campus.
A plaque on bicycle racks also notifies students who park unregistered bicycles at campus racks that they do so at the risk of impoundment.
And with $10 in fees being charged for each reclaimed bicycle, and the annual sale of those whose owners do not return for them, Parking Services stands to collect more than $12,500 from its recent accumulation.
Rice said the fees do not turn profit and go to help pay the day-to-day costs of the department.
“This is not a profit organization,” he said. “We don’t enjoy doing this.”
Rice said the department placed orange warning tickets on unregistered bicycles throughout campus in the past few weeks as well.
Bicycles locked to “something other than a rack” and “obviously inoperable bicycles” are also impounded, Rice said.
Cyclists who discover their bicycles have been impounded can retrieve their wheels at the MSU police impoundment lot, located on the south side of the Department of Police and Public Safety Building.
Free bicycle registration is offered through the East Lansing Police Department. MSU police do honor bicycles registered in the city. Current registration lasts until 2005.
Theater junior Laura Turner’s bicycle also turned up missing last week after she only got to use it three days, she said.
The bicycle was new and she hadn’t had time to register it yet, she said.
“I think it’s enough of a struggle with parking being so hard around here,” Turner said. “It’s almost like they’re daring us to find transportation to campus.”
Tara May can be reached at maytara@msu.edu
