I have had “Fade Zones” and “Marquee Zones” turned on for some time. I keep forgetting to make the “right tool” be something other than the Marquee tool — that’s a simple cursor position in the bottom half of the region.

I don’t fade regions often, so taking the entire top half of a region for a particular tool seems like a waste.

The Fade tool can be invoked by simply holding down control and shift (⌃⇧) and dragging the pointer tool across the start/end of a region — or across a region split, the typical place I would need the tool frequently.