Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Confusion
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Clearance; Ground Event / Encounter Other / Unknown; Ground Incursion Taxiway
Flight Crew Became Reoriented
Airport; Human Factors; Procedure
About three miles or more out I called the runway in sight and landing. As we proceeded inbound; I felt like there wasn't enough lights on. I clicked the mic switch seven times to make sure the lights were on. I didn't see much if anything change. I was looking through the HUD at the time and I moved my head to the side to see if maybe the HUD was somehow obscuring my view of the lights. I didn't see anything different so I thought I must just not be seeing absolutely everything but believed it would be more clearly seen as we got closer. As we proceeded; in the back of my mind; I felt that I should be seeing more lighting and I tried once maybe two times more with the mic switch to see if either I had inadvertently turned the lights down low or what was going on. At the same time I am seeing the PAPI and also the blue lights of the taxiway and I am thinking I should be seeing more lights. As we came closer to what I thought was the runway; I started to pick up more of the pavement to our left then in front of us where we were lined up to land. This is happening very fast obviously and we are getting closer to where the runway should be but I am not seeing it where I think I should be. I am seeing pavement to our left and in the last moments my mind says there is pavement over there and lights on either side; go land there because you don't want to land in the dirt and you must have mistaken what you thought was where the runway was going to be and you had lined up to the right of the runway so slide a little left and land on the runway (again this is what my mind is thinking). And yes the 'runway' seemed a little smaller. Just as the main landing gear was touching the pavement my FO said 'This is the taxiway' and by that time the plane was on the ground and it made more sense to slow the plane down and assess what just happened than try to go around. We then taxied to the end of the taxiway and turned on the runway. There was no other way to turn around to go to the ramp area other than this. So we proceeded on the runway and exited; then proceeded to the ramp where we parked.
Q400 Captain reported mistakenly landing on the taxiway at a non-towered airport after being unable to increase the pilot controlled runway lighting.