It is a time-honored tradition for many New Yorkers: eating on the subway.

Riders regularly carry slices of pizza onto trains and munch on bagels while bolder passengers openly dine on heaps of pasta or Chinese takeout. Anything goes, even if fellow passengers are annoyed by the smells. Other transit systems, like Washington’s subway, ban eating on trains.

But after a track fire in New York this week, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is considering whether to establish new guidelines for eating on the subway. On Tuesday, the authority’s new chairman, Joseph J. Lhota, said that he wanted to eliminate fires caused by trash on the tracks and that some types of eating were not appropriate on the subway.

Mr. Lhota recalled that he was recently riding a No. 2 train when a passenger stepped on board carrying a Styrofoam container of Chinese food with rice.

“Inevitably, the rice fell,” he said. “It was all over the place. I want to avoid things like that.”