For decades, the subway fare and the pizza slice — two New York City commodities — cost almost exactly the same amount. But that “pizza principle” is rapidly disappearing.
As the MTA prepares to increase the transit fare to $3 on Jan. 4, pizza prices across town are substantially higher than the cost to ride the train. The typical price of a plain slice of pizza in New York City now approaches $4, according to a decadelong survey of hundreds of slice joints conducted by this reporter across the city. Pizzamakers and experts who have followed the rising prices point to the COVID-19 pandemic and rising inflation as the cause of the increasing disparity between the price of a subway ride and that of a regular slice of pizza.
The average cost of a slice hovered around $2.54 in 2014, when the subway fare was $2.50, the Gothamist analysis shows. And the trend dates back far longer than that, according to Giovanni Lanzo, who opened Luigi’s Pizza in Park Slope with his father in 1973. Back then, when the subway fare was 35 cents, Lanzo said a slice at his shop cost 30 cents — but also came with a free Coke…