"Down South", "Up North", "Way Down upon the Swanee River", Down in Florida, up in The Yukon, down in Antarctica", etc. etc.
The precedent is there, and you are correct with regard to direction.
However, "down home" is also very prevalent, and when referring to where one is (from an idiom meaning simple, comfortable, old fashioned but with good connotations).
Down here is very common (when it is one's home), perhaps due to other absorbed idiomatic phrases.
I agree with you, except that "transitive" and "intransitive" are too general to be of much use.
Every verb in English (and I think in most languages) has one or more subcategorisation frames, which specify both the number and the kinds of the arguments it takes.
So follow usually takes a direct object (as you say, it is transitive).
Comply cannot take a direct object, but usually requires a "with" phrase: as you say, it is intransitive, but it is part of the syntax of this word that it requires a "with" phrase rather than, say a "to" phrase, so "intransitive" does not capture all the information.
For another similar pair, consider "eat" and "dine". "Eat" almost always requires an object (and if it doesn't, it is usually being used in the special meaning of "have a meal", not just "consume"). "Dine" usually does not take an object, and if it does, it requires an "on" phrase.
For further intricacies about subcategorisation, consider "want" and "wish". Both can take a clause as a direct object; but "wish" can take either a "that" clause ("I wish that I could fly") or an infinitive clause ("I wish to fly"), while in current English "want" can take only an infinitive clause ("I want to go home") and not a "that" clause (*"I want that I go/could go home"). Again, this is part of the intrinsic character of the particular verbs, but this difference is certainly not captured by "transitive" vs "intransitive".
As to why: like most "why" questions about language, the answer is "because that's how it is".
Best Answer
I follow the latest edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary:
1)- near as an adjective: "the near[by] shop"
2)- near as an adverb: "he lives near", "the hour is near", "near dead"
3)- near as a preposition: "a house near the river"
in some contexts you can use near (to): "come near to me!" "*a house near/close to the station". US speakers prefer 'close to', and sometimes 'close to' sounds better anyway: e.g. "The situation is close to critical"
4)- 'nearby' is just an adverb. As a preposition it is dialectal, and a spelling variant of the adjectival phrase near by = 'close at hand'.
Those guidelines should solve most of your problems:
probably there is a typo, they never follow. If you are referring to station, remember that near is the predicate.
(this is an adjective not an adverb)
Merriam-Webster also confirms that in the US nearby cannot be a preposition, therefore the examples in the other answer should be considered wrong, unless an explanation is provided.
These are prepositions and 'nearby' cannot be used as a preposition; 'alongside', 'near' is appropriate there. Besides this, the fact that the verb is in/transitive is not relevant: "she stood near" "she came near". What is fundamental is the distinction between 'adverb' and 'preposition'
For the case of whether "He ran near" is AmEng, I don't know. In terms of whether it is grammatical, I offer:
This does not make sense. The verb is intransitive in both cases, in the first case the verb is intransitive and 'near' is a preposition. It is transitive here: "He ran a great race"