Point failures, signal failures, overhead line faults, communications faults - Metrolink passengers will be all too familiar with these terms.

Although caused by differing glitches in the network, they all have one thing in common - the chaos and frustration they cause.

The M.E.N. has added up all recorded failures like this between May 2016 and May 2017.

In all, and not including those caused by external factors like road traffic accidents or weather, there were 57. In March alone there were 10 points failures.

That’s made for more than 113 HOURS of system delays and shutdowns over the year - or nearly 10 hours a month.

At the weekend, it was yet another complete communications failure that wreaked havoc - the third since April.

(Image: @tanbags)

Trams across Greater Manchester ground to a halt twice, with services suspended across all lines and passengers left looking at blank screens.

It couldn’t have been worse timing for new operator KeolisAmey. Bosses were handed the keys to the castle by former contractor RATP Dev Ltd just last week.

Transport chiefs awarded them the contract in exchange for their promises of greater efficiency, boosted security and a clearer focus on the passenger experience.

Their statement of intent included a clear target-driven commitment to slash incidents like this.

So with a new operator in charge, could faults like this become a rare event, rather than a dreaded regular occurrence?

Aline Frantzen, new Metrolink MD, and Alistair Gordon, chief executive of Keolis UK, were not available to speak to the M.E.N. on Monday as they were said to have been busy tackling the issue.

When the M.E.N. met with them last week, Alistair guaranteed these incidents would be reduced. Sadly we don’t yet have the figures to say by how much.

He did reveal a new monitoring system was among their armoury.

This, he said, would enable the network to ‘monitor itself’. It is already in place on the London Underground, sections of which are also run by Amey.

You may also have noticed that points failures often come in threes or fours one after the other.

For example, on March 20 this year a points failure at Deansgate was followed by another at MediaCity on March 26, followed by one on Broadway a few hours later, followed by a New Moston points failure thee days later.

This is because one points failure can trigger problems elsewhere on the system.

Alistair said their technology would flag this up so it can be tackled before it happens.

He added: “It’s basically an alarm system that says there’s a points failure here - go and check out this area of the network.

“Amey have done a lot of work on this, they are pretty impressive at it.

“We won the bid on quality - we put in a bid where we put the customer first.”

(Image: Mark Waugh)

Last week, Aline described their challenge as ‘complex’.

Today she added: “We apologise to everyone whose journeys were disrupted over the weekend.

“The safety of our passengers and our staff is our top priority. We kept services running for as long as we could and the decision to suspend operations was not taken lightly.

“We are taking this extremely seriously. Having recently taken over the operation of Metrolink, we are devoting all of our efforts into investigating what went wrong. We are putting every resource we have into managing and reducing the risk of this happening in future.”

But the weekend will have been a baptism of fire for them, with Metrolink passengers taking to social media to express their frustrations.

Zack Hallam, @cazkhally said: “Not a great start for Keolis Amey. Thought the binning of RATPDev would be for the better but clearly not. Metrolink IS a failure.”

Paul @pwaring added: “This year’s Metrolink Christmas party has been cancelled due to a comms failure. Venue has to be a brewery with pea soup as the starter.”

Some passengers even appealed directly to mayor Andy Burnham for help.

There is currently a consultation underway on increasing Metrolink fares - but if passengers are to be asked to pay more, they will doubtless expect to get a glitch-free network in return.

Given that Keolis already part-runs the beleaguered Southern rail franchise, their partnership with Amey will now be under huge pressure to prove their doubters wrong.