The mobile ride request company Uber has changed the face of transportation in many cities and perhaps none as radically as Paris.

For decades, Paris’s taxi system, and its drivers, had no competition.

Uber changed all that, for the better, in the opinion of thousands of Uber customers, and the old guard doesn’t like it — as demonstrated in the Paris taxi strike today.

The biggest problem for Paris cabbies is how much they were loathed before Uber existed.

Among the issues residents and tourists could enumerate:

–It seemed as if the city never had enough cabs, and the problem was worse at night. The city limited the number of drivers licensed to work as cabbies at about 17,000, approximately the same size fleet as existed in 1940, and when the city suggested it could give out more licenses, cab drivers inevitably protested.

–Paris cabbies commonly refuse to take on a would-be rider if they thought the ride was too short. Even in horrendous weather. Before they dropped the flag, they wanted to know where you were going and, at times, if your destination didn’t fit in with their plans for the next half hour, they would ask you to get out of the cab.

–The cab companies (and drivers) nickeled-and-dimed their riders. Have a bag? That’s an extra euro or two to stick a bag in the trunk. A fourth passenger? Most cabbies (pre-Uber) wouldn’t take a fourth, even though they could charge extra for it.

–Most Parisians would tell you that many cabbies were unpleasant to their fares and also often had problems with personal hygiene. To wit: They often stank or didn’t pay attention to their jobs.

So, along came Uber, with independent drivers in (usually) well-maintained private cars, and the service was easily arranged via smartphone, and paid for by credit card.

Uber drivers had incentive to be friendly and generally were, often placing magazines in the back seat, as well as bottled water and small candies. They also typically dressed better.

Cabbies apparently are shocked that Uber drivers — who operate outside the system they had gamed for decades — are cutting into their earnings.

So they did a very French thing today, and took to the streets in the sort of obstructionist protest that is far more likely to engender anger among the public than sympathy.

Uber suggested that they picked up more than 10,000 new customers in Paris today, among people who felt no compunction about working around the bellicose cabbies — several of whom set tires ablaze and threw them on the road.

Several drivers were arrested.

An English-language, Paris-based website quoted a local resident who said taxi drivers were complicit in their declining earnings.

According to the local.fr website, one commuter said: “We’re sick of it. They make no effort at all. They’re stuck in the past. They never stop for us, they’re never kind and then they just block the roads. I have absolutely no sympathy for them at all.”

The site also suggests Paris taxi rides can cost twice as much as an Uber ride.

No sympathy. That is it, exactly.