Previous tier is possible, but difficult, because beltlayer connectors are created automatically by looking at the existing underground belts, and it's not always easy to figure out what the previous tier should be.
Splitters are not allowed on the underground level because they are 2x1 entities, which makes the blueprint black magic quite tricky compared with having everything be 1x1. I've experimented with fixing it off and on, but it's still very complicated. I also wanted to prevent people from moving their entire main bus underground, for balance reasons.