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Much has been written about the impact of the Channel Tunnel but the attention has been primarily on the gross economic implications of the investment which ignore questions of additionality and spatial effects. The completion of the Channel Tunnel will create a new transport infrastructure but this will be at the cost of lost opportunities for investing these resources elsewhere. Net national gains are, therefore, likely to be somewhat less than many anticipate. Equally, the importance of the tunnel for the South East's economy is uncertain both in terms of the overall long-term impact and the detailed implications for areas within the region. This paper attempts to examine the short and long-term implications for the South East. It attempts to do this by taking cognizance of environmental and social factors as well as reviewing the more standard 'economic' factors. The nature of available data coupled with inadequacies in our understanding of many key links in interacting spatial economic systems inevitably means that calculations are far from precise. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]