Does the amount of miners matter when it comes to amount of transactions?
no
you could say more miners means more competition, and that pushes them to think harder about how to make their transaction choosing tech work more efficiently, but that's gonna have the tiniest effect to the users wanting to get money sent
I believe that if we will see bitcoin at 50k+ without Lightning Network or an similar idea we need to do it slow, i don't believe we can reach that high in a few months.
Not that bothered myself if huge gains don't materialize next year. Too many people are getting into Bitcoin for the wrong reasons, it's far better to take exactly as long as it needs to get the scaling (and privacy and network strength and fungibility...) done right, rushing it carries an increase in the risk of a price of $0K
Saying that, there's more scaling tech coming next year: schnorr & taproot. Or at least, optimistically, they'll roll out next year, and they're on-chain related. Lightning will be improved by then too, too many Lightning improvements are coming to list quickly (and are all easier to roll out than the schnorr & taproot)