ATLANTA — Pushing aside years of funding problems and construction dilemmas, this city on Tuesday opened a small loop of a transportation option that last operated here more than six decades ago: streetcars.

Although the electric streetcars, condemned by some as a $98 million gimmick, will not relieve Atlanta’s traffic woes as they glide across nearly three miles of track, the system is part of a broader strategy that supporters contend will help remake a city long regarded as something less than an archetype of urban design. It also gives Atlanta a place on the expanding list of cities that, backed by millions of dollars from the federal government, recently have constructed streetcar networks.

“These are not projects for right now,” said Keith T. Parker, the chief executive of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority. “These are projects for the future, and when you look around, the cities who we’re competing with around this nation and around the world, they’ve made investments in public transportation.”

Whether the streetcars will ever become moving landmarks of Atlanta, as they are in New Orleans and San Francisco, may not be known for decades. But they are already a faint throwback in a state where historians say every major city once had streetcars.