This piece is the follow-up to our poll on whether our readers thought the proposed railway line between Cambridge and Oxford was a good thing. We published this piece a month after the initial poll story to give our readers enough time to have their say on the East West Rail project and to allow a vast range of views to develop in the timeframe.

Upon looking at the results in preparation for writing this story, I was quite surprised at just how lopsided they were. In total, 84 per cent of those who were polled said the project would be a bad thing, only 14 per cent said it would be a good thing, and a miniscule two per cent said they were unsure.

These results got me thinking about what the best way to approach this story was. We needed to accurately report what our readers’ views were, even though the overwhelming majority of them voted negatively towards the railway line, but we had to be careful not to be too disparaging of the project in order to avoid a complaint from the company as well as those who voted in the poll in favour of the railway line.

When writing the piece, I included a number of background details that I had included in previous pieces that expressed both sides of the argument, but changed the wordings so they weren’t too similar and would be more likely to be picked up in search. I also added in the full results of the poll to provide some context to the story of people giving their verdict.

As mentioned in the previous section, I also wrote a comments piece where CambridgeshireLive readers were more split in their opinions. Some of them had commented that the project would provide vast improvements to public transport so we included a small section as well as a link back to the piece (which can be found here).

Overall, the poll results generated hundreds of interactions on social media, as well as 5,000 page views and an average engagement time of three minutes. Stories like these show why giving our readers a voice on local projects is so important because it gives them the opportunity to make their views heard, encourages them to get involved with our site and provides new meanings to stories that otherwise wouldn’t be there.