Bangkok's Department of Traffic and Transport — not the police — runs 65,015 cameras at 16,623 sites. Most are standalone recorders rather than pooled feeds: in 2017 the city counted 38,404 of 53,249 cameras as unconnected, and about a fifth of footage requests came back empty. Residents order clips online at cctv.bangkok.go.th, and more than 44,000 were issued in the year to September 2024. Since 2023, AI at 100 sites has flagged motorcyclists riding on footpaths. The city also installed 1,325 dummy casings beside 2,046 working cameras in one contract, and declared the last fakes gone only in May 2014.
AI cameras at 100 sites logged 90,907 footpath-riding violations in the year to September 2025, but only 10,977 fines were paid, about 12%, worth 2.33M baht.
🎓 Lesson
A camera count is not a capability. Bangkok's fleet passed 65,000 while most units stayed standalone recorders, and its AI enforcement collects on roughly one flagged violation in eight.
Evidence🏛️ Official
Scale🏙️ City-wide
Cost≈2.3bn baht over fiscal 2023-2025, more than 80% of it maintenance
FundingBangkok Metropolitan Administration budget
Sources
↗ The Nation Thailand — City Hall defends its 2.3bn-baht CCTV spend (14 July 2025)Supports the headline counts (65,015 cameras at 16,623 points), the 2.3bn-baht fiscal 2023-2025 budget with more than 80% for maintenance, the 44,000-plus footage copies issued October 2023 to September 2024, and the new control centre due February 2026.
↗ The Standard — the city explains its CCTV budget (July 2025)Thai-language reporting of the same 12 July 2025 briefing: independently confirms 65,015 cameras at 16,623 points, about 800m baht a year in maintenance, 44,000-plus footage requests, and the automatic camera-fault detection planned for the first phase of the control centre.
↗ PR Bangkok — expanding the AI camera pointsOperator source for the impact figure: 100 AI-equipped camera points, 90,907 footpath-riding violations detected 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025, 10,977 fines paid, 2,330,097 baht collected, plus 100 additional software licences planned.
↗ Thai PBS — AI catches motorcycles on footpaths, 4,000 in one week (June 2023)Dates the AI layer: five pilot sites, 12-20 June 2023, over 4,000 motorcycles detected in the first week, with a 2,000-baht fine issued by post after cross-checking plates against vehicle registration records. The governor is quoted directly.
↗ Voice TV — why footage requests so often meet a broken camera (21 April 2017)Supports the pooling split and the failure rate: 53,249 cameras of which 38,404 (72.12%) standalone and 14,845 fibre-linked to 88 police stations and a central control room; a city official states 80% of footage requests were fulfilled in January to March 2017.
↗ Thairath — the dummy CCTV sagaThai primary account of the dummy-camera affair: a 330m-baht 2007-08 procurement of 2,046 real and 1,325 dummy cameras (2,500-2,700 baht each against 34,000-130,000 for real units); a special committee found no evidence of corruption. Also the basis for the 2007 start year as the first large documented city camera procurement.
↗ Bangkok Post — no dummy cameras, says the city (2014)Supports the May 2014 closure of the dummy episode: the city declares no dummy cameras remain, admits many real ones do not work, and offers 100,000 baht to anyone who finds a fake. Paywalled to automated fetching; coverage confirmed by search and by dated Thai reports of the 2 May 2014 press conference.
↗ Rocket Media Lab — how safe is Bangkok with nearly sixty thousand cameras? (2 May 2022)Independent counterweight: counts 56,561 city cameras as of 10 March 2020, maps camera density against district crime-risk points, and finds that camera installation became the only crime-prevention metric, with no published effectiveness data and no protocol governing access to or retention of the footage.
↗ Thairath — how to request city CCTV footageDocuments the citizen-facing footage request service: requests filed online or via a LINE account, requiring a police daily record and a copy of the national ID, with 24-hour online download and status tracking.
📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Bangkok's Municipal CCTV Network” — Bangkok, Thailand. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/bangkok-cctv-network/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.
