This talk shows that the formation and propagation of traffic oscillations in the absence of lane changes can be explained by the stochastic nature of drivers' acceleration processes. By adding a white noise to drivers' desired acceleration in free-flow, oscillations are produced that accord well with observation. This theory suggests that driver error is a function of roadway geometry, that it determines the average speed at the bottleneck, as well as oscillation period and amplitude. The model has been implemented with a single additional parameter compared to the kinematic wave model with bounded accelerations.
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