I don't think the MTA wants to leave Broadway local with just one service. I've been on packed W trains even when we were riding the ass of the R train
I'm going to go completely against this and say none of them really need artics but rather, the rather the service needs to run as scheduled. Pre 2018 you could say the B35 also needed artics, now they got artics and the route is still bad cause of missing runs.
Doesn't matter. The current money used is only funding the current service. More service (or in this case more cost cause there is zero fare collection) means more money.