Location-based services (LBS) are dependent on a knowledge of a real time location, knowledge of the environment, and integrated with communications. An ideal specification for travel data collection. LBS has become pervasive very swiftly, but the implications are not yet widely recognised. The addition of realtime information, response and service providers to the now familiar combination of GPS, and data recording is the focus of the present paper. The business development path to LBS is outlined, and the implications for data gathering, matching and response considered. The privacy and surveillance aspects are of varying sensitivity in different cultures, even within a single country, but the addition of intelligence methods of data gathering add a further layer to existing concerns. The substantial potential of LBS to enable improved understanding, monitoring and management of transport provision and movements are clear, but barriers to its wide adoption are outlined in terms of the cultures of authorities collecting data and those of the subjects of that collection.