Correction: A previous version of this story, and its headline, misstated the number of trees that will need to be removed. While the 400 trees and 600 understory plants will be replanted near Aquatic Park, the city says the number being removed is “far less” but couldn’t say how many.
A swath of thick brush and tall trees along railroad tracks at the eastern edge of Berkeley’s Aquatic Park will soon be cleared as one small part of a major county project to improve truck and car access to the Port of Oakland, about four miles to the south.
The dense vegetation slated for cutting, including a number of trees, buffers the park from the busy Union Pacific tracks, a key north-south route for freight and Amtrak, and lies entirely on railway property, covering a steep slope down from the tracks to the park…