Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s management style can be summed up in two words: Listen. Decide.

Listen, because he knows that there are many people in his department and outside of it who know a lot more about the technical transportation issues than he does. And decide, because, well, he’s got the title.

“Lookit,” he said in an interview in his spacious office atop the Department of Transportation building in Washington, still sounding like the congressman from Peoria that he was for 16 years. “In the end, the people at the White House or in the press, they don’t come to the (department) administrators (to question decisions), they come to me.”

He likes to listen, he says, because he needs to learn. But then, he tells his people: “I’ve listened to both sides; here’s the way we’re going to do it.”

Take for example the controversial Dulles Airport rail station fight in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. On the drawing boards for 40 years, the issue came to a head in recent weeks when local and airport authorities locked horns over the station placement. An above ground station would be less costly but less convenient; a station under the airport would be more costly for local taxpayers but great for airport travelers. Amazingly, the local entities seemed ready to let the economically important project die rather than compromise on the placement and price of the station.

Enter LaHood. As the Washington Post put it: “(He) understood there was no perfect option on the table” and “with a critical assist by LaHood , the project is back on track.”

DOT spokeswoman Jill Zuckman said LaHood “held about six meetings with all the parties and then recommended a deal that everyone said they could get behind.” The deal called for an above ground station and an innovative cost sharing arrangement between the state, federal and local entities. Listen. Decide.

The FAA has been operating on 21 (budget) extensions. You can’t really implement the kind of Next Gen program we’re talking about with that.

In another example, the O’Hare Airport modernization plan in Chicago was equally stuck in a political/business quagmire until LaHood came along. After negotiation in the spring, LaHood brokered a compromise under which the airlines dropped their objection to building another runway, millions of dollars of federal funding came through, and the project got off the ground.

LaHood announced the $1.17 billion deal, pleasing Chicago’s mayor, as well as the airlines, which dropped their lawsuit against the city which was seeking to postpone building of two runways. Under the compromise, construction on one runway was to begin immediately, with the other one put off for a few years.

At a press conference announcing the deal, United Airlines CEO Jeffery Smisek was asked what changed the airlines’ position that more runways would not be needed for many years, Smisek nodded toward LaHood. “The gentleman standing behind me helped change my mind,” the Chicago Tribune reported. Listen. Decide.

But things don’t always work out for the mild mannered LaHood. In July, the FAA was forced to curtail operations when Congress disregarded LaHood’s plea to extend funding (for the 21st time) for the agency while a permanent funding bill languished.

Though he made his reputation in Congress (he was a staff assistant to Minority Leader Bob Michel for 12 years before succeeding Michel’s seat) and boasts of an intimate knowledge of the place, it’s still sometimes frustrating as an administrator to have to deal with things like impermanent funding.

For example, the FAA has been trying to implement the so-called “Next Gen” system of air traffic control to replace the radar-based system that dates from the 1970s. Airlines have been reluctant to buy in, partially, LaHood says, because of the inability to plan.

“The FAA has been operating on 21 (budget) extensions,” he said, with some exasperation. “You can’t really implement the kind of Next Gen program we’re talking about with that. We need a six-year program, a five-year program, we need the opportunity to really launch this in a way that gives the stakeholders, industry, airlines, airports, the idea that we’ve got a good idea, we’ve got the resources, and we’ve got a game plan to get this going.”

Congress plays a large role in LaHood’s mandate to run the department, overall. In an interview, he said he tells his subordinates that they are to understand Congress’ mandate and carry it out because hard-earned taxpayer dollars are not to be spent unwisely.

LaHood went from managing a congressional office with 18 employees to managing a department with 55,000. There’s no comparison. But LaHood said the key to managing a place that large was to fill the top 100 “political” positions, and the rest would follow. He brought two trusted aides with him from his congressional staff. The other 98 came from the Obama campaign, Capitol Hill or from the private sector.

LaHood’s unique position as the only Republican Cabinet officer in a Democratic administration means there are members of both parties in his top echelons. He says they get along well because they focus on the DOT’s priorities, rather than the politics. As testament to that, in the past two and one-half years, only a handful of the top administrators have left, and they went to other posts in the Obama administration or back to Capitol Hill.

Another key to integrating himself into the Transportation Department was to interview the former secretaries, including Norman Mineta, who was a Democrat who served in the Republican administration of George W. Bush, to see how they handled it. And LaHood persuaded Deputy Tom Barrett to stay on, banking on his expertise gleaned through service in the Bush administration under Mineta.

So far, LaHood’s priorities include:

• Insuring the safety of the traveling public, particularly a campaign against “distracted driving,” such as text messaging. As part of that effort, LaHood has held distracted driving summits in which families of those who have been involved in distracted driving crashes contribute their suggestions. One of those, calling for police to enforce distracted driving laws, has been put into place in a pilot program in Syracuse, N.Y., and Hartford, Conn., both of which have seen dramatic declines in the use of hand-held devices while driving.

• Beefing up efforts to combat pilot fatigue in the wake of the Colgan air crash in Buffalo that killed 50 people, including the pilot and one person on the ground. Training rules were also tightened.

• Consumer projection for air passengers, including limiting the amount of time passengers can spend “stuck on the tarmac” at airports.

• And instituting new rules to combat “sleepy controllers,” at least seven of whom were reported to have fallen asleep this year in control towers. Among the changes, the controllers must have a minimum of nine hours between shifts and can no longer be put on an unscheduled midnight shift following a day off.

And to show that it is more than possible to teach an old dog new tricks, the 65-year-old LaHood is master of his own video reports, “On the Go with Ray LaHood,” as well as the blog “Fast Lane.” He has become a visible face of the Department of Transportation.

He scores 61 on klout.com, a website that measures online influence. By comparison, White House spokesman Jay Carney, who is on television nearly daily, scores 65.

“This is the first time they can remember who the secretary of transportation is,” LaHood said. “I thought it was pretty neat.”