Trains: High Speed Trains... to Lyon???

In the first blog post about the planned 320 km/h high speed rail in Sweden, I calculated the population along the line from Lund to Järna (Malmö/Copenhagen to Stockholm).

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

As of 2017, there are only four high speed lines of 320 km/h: Madrid to Barcelona, Paris (eastbound and westbound) and Dijon to Basel.

The following table compares some existing lines with the planned Swedish line. The populations are calculated within a 10 km and a 25 km radius from the stations. For the Swedish line, I exclude and include København in the calculations.

Start	End	Speed	Stations	Length	Pop 10 km	Pop 25 km
Malmö	Stockholm	320 km/h	12	460 km	1,6 M/2,5 M	3 M/4,5 M
Paris	Lyon	300 km/h	4	427 km	4,3 M	10 M
Paris	Strasbourg	320 km/h	5	409 km	4,8 M	10 M
Madrid	Barcelona	320 km/h	8	600 km	5,7 M	12 M
Tokyo	Niigata	320 km/h	12/5	270 km	8,5 M	26 M

I also added the Japanese Joetshu Shinkanshen line, one of the smaller lines in the Shinksanshen network.

The proposed Swedish line will serve a much smaller population than the other lines. Also, that line has 12 stations, that will make the trains slower. One stop will take some five minutes, according to the time tables for the French/Spanish lines.

For the Paris/Strasbourg line, there are 17 departures per day in each direction. 13 of them doesn't stop between Paris and Strasbourg. A similar tradeoff will be necessary for the train operator in Sweden: Either stop at many stops, using the stations that are built but also making the train slower, or travel directly between Malmö/Copenhagen and Stockholm, passing several important stations without stopping.

Intermediate conclusion: 
Sweden has a much smaller population density and smaller cities than the European countries. The demand for travels will be much smaller than for the existing lines.