Many times students see them left on campus, long forgotten, tires flat, rust collecting on the bars and seats missing.

MSU Parking Services has impounded more than 1,300 bicycles since this summer.

And while students are notified by letter if their bike has been impounded, many times bicycles are not retrieved.

Many of them are taken to the MSU Surplus Store after no one bothers to retrieve their transportation. The store is open from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.

“Every once in a while we get nice ones in here you kind of look at and scratch you head and wonder why they are here,” sales and marketing coordinator Kris Jolley said.

Unclaimed bikes are common on campus said Mike Rice, deputy chief for parking and safety.

Rice said the parking department placed notices in campus newsletters and posted fliers around campus.

A plaque on bicycle racks also notifies students who park unregistered bicycles at campus racks that they risk impoundment.

Students are charged $10 in fees for each reclaimed bicycle, and there is an annual sale of bikes whose owners don’t return.

Rice said the fees help pay the costs of the department.

“This is not a profit organization,” he said. “We don’t enjoy doing this.”

Bicycles locked to “something other than a rack” and “obviously inoperable bicycles” also are impounded, Rice said.

To avoid impoundment, bicycles can be registered by filling out a basic form at the campus police station.

Cyclists who discover their bicycles have been impounded can retrieve their wheels at the MSU police impoundment lot, located near the Department of Police and Public Safety Building.

Theater junior Laura Turner’s bicycle turned up missing after she only got to use it three days, she said. The bicycle was new, and she hadn’t had time to register it.

“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.”