It has been decades since I flew into Houston regularly, but I remember a walkway alongside at least part of the people mover. Which at times was faster, but the point being both were slow but very useful shortcut (even if so lightly used they were almost creepy).

I was a regular at the airport hotel at the time. My years commuting to work in Houston was difficult in many ways, but climbing off the subway and taking the elevator up to a packed lobby, but skipping past the line to the "whatever it was called before Bonvoy" desk is still strangely a good memory in the middle of the hard ones. The ride or walk was quiet, and just enough time to decompress, after a delayed flights on a disrupted, stormy night.