When the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority replaces its fleet of more than 3,200 buses, rail cars and locomotives, the agency will have created 22,051 jobs.

Unfortunately, those jobs may not go to Americans.

Many Metro contracts are inked with foreign manufacturers from Japan, China and Europe because American companies no longer produce this kind of rolling stock.

Although Metro cannot require only locals get hired, it has used a points-based incentive system and some arm-twisting to move new bus and rail car bids to the top of the stack. One successful example is the $890 million contract Metro signed with Kinkisharyo International in 2012 that resulted in 175 new rail cars for the Gold and Expo light-rail lines. More importantly, the Japanese company agreed to build a manufacturing plant in Palmdale that created 404 local jobs.

Building on such pilot programs, Metro board members Sheila Kuehl and Hilda Solis drafted a policy motion that was adopted Thursday by the agency’s safety and operations committee, making permanent the so-called U.S. Employment Plan’s practices on all Metro rail and bus purchases of $100 million or more.

The plan, signed by six Metro board members, goes before the Metro board Thursday for a vote.

“I have a deep and steadfast commitment to maximizing job creation and career development, with a special emphasis on providing employment to low-income residents and those facing barrier to employment,” Solis, secretary of labor in the Obama Administration, said in a written statement.

The policy also would require disadvantaged American workers comprise at least 10 percent of the total of new wages and benefits, according to the motion.

Flush with cash from L.A. County taxpayers from Measure M, a half-cent sales tax that is expected to raise $120 billion over 40 years, the board wanted local tax dollars to be used to hire local Americans, in particular, applicants whose lives would change dramatically by landing a middle-class, manufacturing job.

“This is a big step for Metro,” said Erika Thi Patterson, national policy director for the nonprofit Jobs To Move America, a group that has been working with Metro and other transit agencies to form “hire American” agreements with companies. “This is setting Metro up with a systematic economic development program.”

Metro’s plan will provide single parents, veterans, people released from prison or jail and foster youth aging out of the county’s system opportunities for manufacturing jobs that pay livable wages, Kuehl said in written statement.

In the last seven years, Los Angeles County has attracted transportation manufacturing companies. The reasons? Metro and others, including Foothill Transit in the San Gabriel and Pomona valleys, Pasadena Transit, Long Beach Transit and Antelope Valley Transit, are swapping out natural gas buses for electric ones, creating a market for clean transportation.

Drawn by the need, future Metro contractors have opened plants in Los Angeles County. One such company is Protera, an electric-bus maker based in the Silicon Valley that opened a manufacturing facility in City of Industry last year and recently agreed to build 25, 35-foot electric buses for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, an agency not related to Metro. BYD, a Chinese concern, is building electric buses in Lancaster.

“Who would’ve thought L.A. County 20 years ago would be the center of transportation manufacturing?” said Andrew Gonzales, regional spokesman for the bus and train operators in SMART, the Sheet Metal Air Rail Transportation union.

“It is a testament to the workforce here, that there are high quality manufacturing jobs, the kind of jobs that left and went to China. The USEP will really protect American workers and provide high quality jobs here,” Gonzales said.