Be careful where you lock up your bike on campus after spring break.
The Physical Plant will begin enforcing rules against using hand railings as bicycle racks March 18 by removing and impounding offenders' bikes.
The enforcement is in response to a spike in complaints from disabled students during the past year about blocked passageways and unusable railings.
"Have you ever seen a person that is handicapped using the handrail and having to move away and almost fall because of a bike locked to it?" asked Ralph Alires, Area 4 manager for the Physical Plant. "That's what we're looking at."
The UNM Student Handbook outlines rules for student conduct. One of the rules in the Bicycle and Other Non-motorized Vehicles section makes it illegal to "park a bicycle any other place than at an authorized bicycle rack."
"We do have a policy against it, but it hasn't been enforced - they've been worried about confrontations," said Rob Burford, a judicial affairs specialist with the Dean of Students office and member of the Campus Safety Committee.
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Burford said in November that several people had called the Physical Plant to say they depend on the railings to get in and out of buildings.
One caller was very upset because a bicycle chained to a railing on a ramp prevented her from getting out of the building with her wheelchair, he said.
Alires said he had actually seen it firsthand.
"I caught an elderly lady that had to move away from the handrail because there was a bike across it, and almost fell," he said, adding that he felt that bicyclists who used railings were just being lazy. "Sure, I'd like to park my vehicle right next to where I work, too. We just need more planning on the part of bike users."
Alires said the plant had not removed bikes since a rash of railing offenses near Centennial Library two years ago.
Bicycle locks, including U-locks, will be destroyed, and the bikes will be taken to the UNM Police Department to be stored until owners come for them. If bikes go unclaimed, they will be auctioned off, UNM police Lt. Michael Omtvedt said.
Owners must have either registered their bikes with UNM police or another verifiable authority, or must present a receipt or other notation that contains the bike's serial number in order to claim their property, he said.
Owners will not have to pay a fine to retrieve their bikes.
The department already has almost 40 bikes that it plans to auction off some time in April, Omtvedt said.
Most are bikes that were found, turned in or removed by the Physical Plant in the past.
All serial numbers have been compared to UNM bike registration, theft reports and other databases, he said.
"We'll do anything we can to match the numbers - we'd rather give the bikes back to their owners than auction them," he said. "I don't know why they don't come to claim them - some are high-dollar bikes."
Most of the bikes in the department's basement storage area were street or off-road types - some in the $600 to $700 range, Omtvedt said. The auction prices will start at about $5.
Auction money goes to a state fund, he said, estimating that the last auction netted about $500.
Burford said he noted a few missing or out-of-date bicycle racks during Campus Safety Committee's Feb. 19 safety walk. He said he planned to include the concerns in the final safety walk report to the Physical Plant.
Alires said two racks recently removed from outside the Communication and Journalism Building were being repaired for damage from skateboarders and would soon be returned.
"We're looking to put bike racks in where we've seen bikes on rails," he said.
