Raleigh, N.C. — Raleigh leaders broke ground Thursday on the city's $21 million state-of-the art transit operations center, which is being funded, in part, by federal stimulus money.

The center will sit on 23 acres at Poole Road east of Interstate 440 and will replace Capital Area Transit's 30-year-old operations facility on Blount Street.

Construction is expected to be complete by spring 2011.

The transit operations center will include a 27,400-square-foot, two-story operations administration building and a single-story 56,000-square-foot bus maintenance facility.

It will also accommodate 125 buses and have the ability to expand to an additional 75 buses. The existing facility on Blount Street can handle 50 buses.

City leaders say they hope the project will be an economic boost because of the $11.1 million in stimulus funding. That will allow the project to employ 600 people at any given time.

CAT serves an average of 4 million passengers and covers an average of about 2.5 million miles a year. It has 37 fixed routes and two express routes throughout the city.

Ridership has been on the rise, marking an 11 percent increase over the past year.