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Just to share some thoughts about functionality, I'm not so sure what I envision would translate exactly to "folding". I mean, it could........ but I realize that is a concept that is completely foreign to Qtractor itself. I'd think the quickest path would involve making use of existing functionality (where possible). In other words, more like rearranging furniture in an existing home as opposed to buying new.

So right now, we can add a track. When we do this, we select between 1 of 2 choices; Audio or MIDI. What if we were given a 3rd choice of Automation? If that option were made possible, it would also stand to reason that the user would also be required to associate this new Automation track with an existing track. With the relationship established, the logical result might be that the new track is inserted/injected below the track specified as the owner/parent. That's probably not a huge lift as it would seem to imply extending a form, adding a new subform, and tapping into Qtractor's already existing capabilities of adding and moving tracks.

If the above is a reasonable starting place, I'd think an Automation track would be different from a "normal" track in that it would not be able or responsible for hosting clips. Rather, it would simply act as a container to display automation data (again, something already possible so I'd hope the lift wouldn't be massive).

Then a parent track would obviously need to offer the user a means to hide or show all automation tracks. Again, this doesn't necessarily need to look like "folding" as much as it just needs to achieve the objective of simply showing or not showing.

An automation track itself might contain the widget used to discover/assign the actual automation property. Again, I'm talking about relocating existing functionality rather than creating anew.

Just some thoughts off the top of my head. Also, everything I'm throwing out here is specific to the first part of the ask which is to end up with something where it is possible to view multiple automation lanes simultaniously. I'm just thinking about them as tracks rather than sticking to the "lanes" convention since, based on other wares, that term does (even subconsciously) seem to imply "folding".