THE STATE AND MOST MUNICIPALITIES impose a surcharge for parking violations and give the vehicle owner 21 days to appeal before assessing a penalty. The MBTA, by contrast, assesses a penalty after just three days, appeal or no appeal.

Someone caught parking in a T lot without putting the proper payment in the honor box will find a ticket on their windshield with a dire warning: Pay the $4 fine or appeal within three days, or get hit with an extra $20 fine. Ignore the ticket completely and your license and registration may not get renewed.

The fine print on the back of the ticket matches what’s on the tickets of every other government parking authority: Drivers have 21 days to file an appeal. But the T will still hit you with a $20 surcharge if the appeal is filed after three days. The agency hits you with a $1 surcharge even if you appeal within three days.

“This rule was adopted to discourage appeals that are filed just to delay payments,” T spokesman Joe Pesaturo wrote in an email.

The MBTA’s tickets also seem dated. For example, the ticket says the T has the authority to issue parking tickets and fines under section 6A, chapter 161A of the Massachusetts General Laws, but that section was repealed in 1999. Pesaturo cited another law that gives the T the authority to issue tickets and fines.

Pesaturo says more than 334,000 tickets have been issued by the T for nonpayment of a parking fee over the last three years. He said the company that handled parking enforcement issues for the T during that period did not track appeals or penalty payments.