Self-reinforcing directionality generates truncated Lévy walks without the power-law assumption.

We introduce a persistent random walk model with finite velocity and self-reinforcing directionality, which explains how exponentially distributed runs self-organize into truncated Lévy walks observed in active intracellular transport by Chen et al. [Nature Mater., 14, 589 (2015)10.1038/nmat4239]. We derive the nonhomogeneous in space and time, hyperbolic partial differential equation for the probability density function (PDF) of particle position. This PDF exhibits a bimodal density (aggregation phenomena) in the superdiffusive regime, which is not observed in classical linear hyperbolic and Lévy walk models. We find the exact solutions for the first and second moments and criteria for the transition to superdiffusion.