Raise the Hammer

If you wanted to avoid running on Barton itself, just across the tracks there's a narrow strip of green-space along Strachan and Birge along the CN rail line (but outside of the CN R.O.W.), which would be easier to get out to that storage yard.

You could make this spur the the A-line, but going in the other direction.

So the A-line could run up James, along Strachan/Birge (the crossing between Wellington and Ferguson would be tricky). Run along the North side of Birge until Victoria. Or Barton, if that works for Barton Street. Anyhow, at Victoria you have your spur out to the storage yard. Birge probably works better for this although there are spots where it might push into the CN ROW. Either way, we've got our HGH stop here (full disclosure I work at HGH).

Then go straight down Victoria and up the escarpment via the Claremont access (which has plenty of room for LRT). Then it's Upper James all the way out to the airport.

You'd have to let Wellington take over as the unified access to the Claremont, meaning it would need 2-way conversion. Wellington would get pretty congested, though, since it would be doing triple-duty as the bi-directional access to Claremont and Burlington Street as well as providing a bypass around the pedestrian-only zone of King through Hunter and Cannon.

So the bottom of the Claremont would need some rejiggering to move the down-bound auto-traffic to Wellington, and you'd need to figure out how to cross the CN tracks between Ferguson and Wellington if you did the Birge alignment vs Barton... and there's 2 houses on the South side of Birge that you'd have to ask a really tough question about, plus Jackie Washington park is going to get chewed into a bit. But otherwise it would be a much easier project than the current A-line plan that involves a complete obliteration and reconstruction of the entire length of James Mountain Road.

James North would be uselessly congested so it would just make sense to give up and declare it pedestrian-only, but James North could handle that.

So, King/James up to the James North Train station, then over to Hamilton General Hospital. Make a stop at the Mary street so that it's not a complete waste for the folks who live/work around there. Then up Victoria all the way through out to the airport. End the line at the Mountain Mall for phase 1, then phase 2 is going all the way out to the Airport.

Boom. A-line that services the HGH, hooks into the storage yard, and doesn't require boring a hole through the escarpment.