Car-Pools Voluntary in Softer Clean-Air Plan : Trips: Plan would make sharing the ride for employees voluntary for a while. After a certain time limit, however, employers would face penalties.

A revised clean-air plan unveiled Tuesday by the San Diego Air Pollution Control District would impose less stringent penalties on businesses that are required to participate in employee trip reduction plans.

While the new clean air proposal outlines ways to increase the number of commuters who get to work by car-pool, public transportation and bicycle, it would go easier on employers than an earlier proposed plan that was heavily criticized by the business community.

The district’s board of directors will hold a final public hearing June 9 to consider adopting the new strategy.

Under the previously proposed plan, mandatory parking fees ranging from $30 to $100 were to be imposed by employers on employees who commuted alone and did not follow measures, like car-pooling, to help decrease the smog-producing emissions by cars.

Under the new, softer conditions, the first two years of the trip reduction program would be voluntary, except for employers with 100 or more employees, who would have only one year to meet employee trip reduction goals or face certain penalties, which the district did not define.

Smaller businesses with 11 to 24 employees would have up to six years before they were required to enforce a trip reduction plan.

Business owners who make trips directly from their homes, real estate agents and handicapped people who must drive specially equipped vehicles would be exempt from the program.

“We are going to use the carrot approach rather than the stick,” said John Woodard, spokesman for the Board of Air Pollution Control. “The board is sensitive and doesn’t want to chase business away from California, but we are required by law to reduce air pollution rates.”

Under the new rules, employers can devise their own methods of bringing their work force up to a 1.5-person-per-car ridership from the existing 1.2 average.

The major focus of the strategy is to expand transit alternatives, improve traffic flow and reduce trips during peak commuting hours, Air Pollution Control Board spokesman Bob Goggin said.

Commuting trips represent 34% of all motor vehicle trips, 51% of all miles traveled and nearly 40% of daily pollution from motor vehicles, Goggin said.