  Stop-and-go waves are commonly observed in traffic and pedestrian flows. In
traffic theory they are described by phase transitions of metastable models.
The self-organization phenomenon occurs due to inertia mechanisms but requires
fine tuning of the parameters. Here, a novel explanation for stop-and-go waves
based on stochastic effects is presented for pedestrian dynamics. We show that
the introduction of specific coloured noises in a stable microscopic model
allows to describe realistic pedestrian stop-and-go behaviour without
requirement of metastability and phase transition. We compare simulation
results of the stochastic model to real pedestrian trajectories and discuss
plausible values for the model's parameters.
