It depends on who you are looking to transact with. If it concerns a store, then it's very likely that there are enough cheap routes leading to that store without you actually having an open connection with it.

If you for example only need to conduct one single transaction with an unknown source, then it doesn't even make sense to use lightning network. In that case it's much faster to conduct an onchain transaction.

People transact most frequently with services, merchants, gambling sites, sites allowing you to earn Bitcoin, and so forth. All these entities will enjoy plenty of cheap routes that you can use without being directly connected to them.

Give it some time.