Release dates are hidden from the UI on parking lot categories. Automations based on those release dates, however, access these hidden dates and act on them. This means that some automation rules will behave in seemingly erratic because they take into accounts dates that appear to be empty to the users, which causes confusion and unexpected results.
By adding a method to exclude parking lots from automation rules by filtering them out, the rules could then be enacted just when valid releases are used. Currently, that is not possible as the parking lots look just like scheduled releases to the automations.