Here's what I tried before...
seqField = "Sequence"
where_clause = arcpy.AddFieldDelimiters("clipLayer", seqField)+ sN
arcpy.SelectLayerByAttribute_management("clipLayer", "NEW_SELECTION", where_clause)
# Clip roads w/ selected polygon - for this I will need a search cursor
clipRoadsShp = arcpy.Clip_analysis(Road, "clipLayer", "in_memory")
# Use geometry/length to get the total length of clipped roads(in meters)
print "calculating road lengths...."
print 'Clip complete ' + strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
g = arcpy.Geometry()
geometryList = arcpy.CopyFeatures_management(clipRoadsShp, g)
length = 0
for geometry in geometryList:
length +=geometry.length
I think that the where-clause and the clipping really slowed the process down and my total processing time was going to be weeks! Also, my polygons overlap and while I do have the advanced license, I am not sure the tabulate intersect tool would work because of the overlapping. I will try the intersect tool and see if that helps. I was thinking that creating a bunch of clip or intersect layers was a waste of space & time because I really only need them to compute the length of roads inside the polygon and that's it.