CINCINNATI — It has been a long time since a streetcar was just a streetcar here.

Instead, a $133 million project to build a 3.6-mile streetcar line through downtown has come to represent, depending on whom you talk to, a debt trap that will sink the city or an ambitious development effort that is central to Cincinnati’s revival.

And when the debate ended last week in an unexpected last-minute victory for the streetcar proponents, it was seen as both a vote of confidence in the city’s future and a reminder of how tenuous support for the project had become.

On the brink of being shut down, the project was saved by a successful petition drive and a written commitment, provided by the Haile U.S. Bank Foundation, from about 15 private backers to pay up to $9 million in operating costs, if needed, over the line’s first decade.

“I believe in Cincinnati with or without a streetcar,” said Mayor John Cranley, a Democrat who won election this year on a pledge to kill the project. He spoke at a news conference 10 hours before a deadline set by the federal government for a decision on the project. He added, obviously chagrined, “We’re going to have a streetcar.”