Why does Schiphol Airport have such a long taxi? I recently flew into Schiphol and experienced a very long taxi time (about 20 minutes) from landing to pulling into the pier at the terminal. Given that the flight was only 90 minutes from closing air plane doors to opening air plane doors. I feel that over 20% of flight time is a little excessive for taxiing at the destination airport.

I landed in the early evening. Around 19:30 local time with KLM.

Looking at a map I think I landed at Polderbaan runway as we crossed a main highway. Possibly the A5.



My question is: Why does Schiphol build a runway so remote when there is clearly available land nearer to the main airport terminal? And should this runway be used by short haul flights. Should it not be kept for long haul as it is the widest and longest runway at Schiphol?
Schiphol indeed seems to have enough space to build a runway close to the terminal. However it is more the lack of airspace and laws preventing excessive sound levels that made it necessary to create the "polderbaan". It is also one of the two primary runways for nightflights (link in Dutch (sorry). Found a reference in the English wikipedia:


  Newest runway, opened 2003.
  Located to reduce the noise impact on the surrounding population; aircraft have a lengthy 15-minute taxi to and from the Terminal.