Sing us a song you’re the piano stairs

In a move to get sedentary pedestrians off escalators and onto stairs, Melbourne City Council has approved the installation of temporary “piano stairs” at Southern Cross Station.

The steps, which according to council documents are likely to cost approximately $120,000, will be installed by the Melbourne International Jazz Festival.

During the festival, which takes place in May, there will be about 16-17 piano keys located on the stairs which lead up onto to the Docklands Stadium concourse.

Councillors originally floated the idea as a council venture, but on February 5 they learned that the Melbourne International Jazz Festival had already planned to enact the concept.

Metlink and Southern Cross Station are partnering with the Melbourne International Jazz Festival in the project and the council is yet to decide whether it will get involved in future years.

The concept is based on a commercial, which was filmed in Stockholm last October – one of a series of social experimental commercials commissioned by Volkswagen.

The stairs were planned to be a fun, interactive sound/music experience that encouraged pedestrians to be active and use the stairs instead of escalators.

The Stockholm experiment resulted in 66 per cent more people opting to use the stairs over the escalators.