cryptogon.com | Dozens of photo-enforcement cameras on freeways throughout the state are coming down this week.

A total of 76 cameras will cease operation on Thursday.

The photo-enforcement program, which was meant to catch speeders on Arizona’s freeways, has been controversial from the beginning. The cameras first went up nearly two years ago.

While the cameras have done a good job at snapping speeders, drivers have been ignoring the tickets.

According to the Department of Public Safety, the cameras led to more than 700,000 tickets in the first year of operation. Many of those people, however, never paid the fines.

Some say that’s because the tickets were mailed, making them easy to ignore.

Any driver who ignored a photo-enforcement ticket was supposed to have been served. One problem was that process servers were inundated and simply couldn’t get to everybody. If a person was not served, his or her ticket became invalid after three months.

The speeding tickets should have generated about $90 million in the first year of the program. About one-third of that was actually collected.

Gov. Jan Brewer, who has always been critical of the program, decided earlier this year not to renew Arizona’s contract with Redflex Traffic Systems, the company that runs the cameras