History
Rittō Station opened on 16 March 1991 on the Biwako Line section of the Tōkaidō Main Line, between Moriyama and Kusatsu, as a request-station whose total ¥552 million construction cost was 90% covered by local governments. It is a stop without points or absolute signals, technically classified as a 'stopping place'. A Midori-no-Madoguchi staffed reserved-ticket office began operations on 1 November 1992 and automatic ticket-gates on 11 March 1998. ICOCA IC-card service began on 1 November 2003 and JR Kyoto-Kobe Line operations management system was deployed on 1 October 2006. From 8 March 2018 the Midori-no-Madoguchi was replaced with a Midori-no-Kenbaiki Plus, station numbering JR-A23 introduced on 17 March 2018, and a lift was added inside the ticket-gates on 27 March 2018. The station is operated by JR West Transportation Service under contract from Kusatsu, the managing station.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
Rittō opened with very low ridership but mass-housing and commercial developments on its east side have driven steady growth. Per the Japanese Wikipedia article, JR West's accessibility report gives fiscal-2024 daily users at 18,162, the third-highest among Biwako-Line stations not served by the new-rapid (after Seta and Zeze) and 11th in Shiga Prefecture.