DART recently opened the Blue Line from Rowlett to downtown Dallas via Garland. The old Park n Ride station has been greatly expanded and drop-off lanes added next to the tracks.

A connector street has been added to the charming downtown area via Coyle Street. On Main Street a few small boutiques have sprouted between the clock-tower circle and Rowlett Road.

DART already serves Rowlett with bus service to Garland station and with On-Call service around Rowlett, primarily in the east to lower west portion.

Here's a map of the current On-Call service area in Rowlett.

Blue line light rail service runs all the way to Ledbetter Station near the VA hospital on Lancaster Road. The first train from downtown Dallas leaves Cedars Station at 03:27 AM arriving in Rowlett at 04:20 AM, and the last train from downtown arrives 12:54 AM, with trains 3 or 4 times per hour.

The stops and relative times as of 12/3/12 are:

You can see it takes about an hour to get to the VA Hospital or 45 minutes to go downtown and costs about $5 or less on DART. Information on trips to DFW, Plano and points west or north, e.g.

• Trinity Railway Express (TRE) www.TrinityRailwayExpress.org,
• Fort Worth's The T www.The-T.com, and
• Denton's Connect or A-Train www.DCTA.net,

can be found on the www.DART.org website. The T has the Molly Trolley circulating in downtown Fort Worth. Denton has Campus shuttles to UNT. It's a massively interconnected system.

You can also get to points north, like Plano's Parker Road Station, by transferring to bus at Jupiter Station on the Blue line (0:52 to 0:86 minutes). Fort Worth and D/FW airport are accessible via the downtown Union Station on the TRE or the Orange line plus the 500 bus (1:45 to 2:10).

DART is the largest light rail transit system in the U.S. You can see on this PDF of the Dallas portion of the whole system. Here is a sample of the detail on the map showing rail lines and bus lines near Northwest Highway and Preston Road.

Exact departure and arrival times are:

See the DART.org website for up to date schedules.

Fares:

See the www.DART.org website for up to date fares and information.

Sachse is both in Collin and Dallas counties in north central Texas. It is a suburb of Dallas northeast about 15 miles from the Reunion Tower. The 2010 census reported the city population was 20,329.

Sachse is approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) north of the President George Bush Turnpike (Texas State Highway 190) and Firewheel Town Center, located on Texas State Highway 78.  The Turnpike was recently extended from SH-78 through Rowlett across Lake Ray Hubbard to Interstate Highway 30 (also called US Highway 67). 

Sachse is also home to the Woodbridge Golf Course.  The Northern Texas Chapter of the PGA calls the 18-hole Woodbridge Golf Course home.

Sachse was founded in 1845 by William Sachse, a Prussian immigrant. Purchasing 640 acres (a square mile or 259 hectares) from Collin County, Sachse erected the first cotton mills and cotton gins in the county. There is currently a major historical revivalist movement, intending to restore several old buildings as well as create a local history museum.

Rowlett derives its name from Rowlett Creek, which flows into Lake Ray Hubbard and is a major tributary of the east fork of the Trinity River. The creek in turn was named for a waterway running through the property of Daniel Rowlett who moved from Kentucky to Bonham, Texas, in 1835. Daniel, who was a member of the Smoot-Rowlett political family, had no direct dealings with the town that now bears his name.

The first post office opened on April 5, 1880, when the location was called "Morris" after Postmaster Austin Morris.

The town was later renamed "Rowlett". The Dallas and Greenville Railway passed through the town in 1886, connecting Dallas with Greenville, Texas, and the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad. Shortly after its opening, the line was formally sold to the MKT.

In 1921 the town was a stop on the Bankhead Highway.

The town incorporated in 1952 when its population was 250. In the 1960s the town languished as Interstate Highway 30 bypassed Rowlett.

The town has had a building boom since the completion of Lake Ray Hubbard in 1971 – growing to 1,600 by 1973; 10,573 by 1989; 23,260 by 1990; and 44,503 by 2000. 

The Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) light rail parallels the MKT line into downtown Rowlett, and allows rapid commuting to downtown Dallas.

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