Stop-and-go waves induced by correlated noise in pedestrian models without inertia

Abstract

Stop-and-go waves are commonly observed in traffic and pedestrian flows. In most traffic models they occur through a phase transition after fine tuning of parameters when the model has unstable homogeneous solutions. Inertia effects are believed to play an important role in this mechanism. Here, we present a novel explanation for stop-and-go waves based on stochastic effects in the absence of inertia. The introduction of specific coloured noises in a stable microscopic first order model allows to describe realistic stop-and-go behaviour without requiring instabilities or phase transitions. We apply the approach to pedestrian single-file motion and compare simulation results to real pedestrian trajectories. Plausible values for the model parameters are discussed.